Aluminum job

[Robert Alexander]

This was a different job I did yesterday. A 42 inch aluminum piece .150" thick.
It took me over 7 hours to do the cutting 18,000 r.p.m. @ 90 i.p.m. Over 700 holes[noprob]. I was able to hold .006" on the y and x axis but on the z axis .015"-.020". If I knew I was going to do big aluminum jobs, I probably would have gotten a aluminum table surface.

[james mcgrew]

pretty cool what is it?

[Robert Alexander]

pretty cool what is it?
A vitamin pill rotator. Or that's the only name I could think of at the moment.
Pills come off a conveyor, and roll onto this flat plate which is rotating slowly. The pills roll into the ob round slots and fall down onto another conveyor which wraps the pills, in a nice punch out plastic and paper backed card.

[Joey Jarrard]

Robert when you mill aluminum you need to have a surface that will not hold moisture and swell. The heat of your spindle I read before could be from your rpm. 18000 is the max for your spindle faster is not always best. We range from 14000 to 16000 when we mill aluminum.

This is a great job I would love to have the org pic in an email so I can use it.

[james mcgrew]

on the road now

[Robert Alexander]

Robert when you mill aluminum you need to have a surface that will not hold moisture and swell. The heat of your spindle I read before could be from your rpm. 18000 is the max for your spindle faster is not always best. We range from 14000 to 16000 when we mill aluminum.



You are right about the swelling on the surface. But before I took on this job I told the customer the tolerances that I could hold in the Z axis, and they did not think it was a big deal. Only the x and y were important.

Are the rpms you mention in your post for the O-flutes/1 flutes?

And I will keep a note of your speeds you use for aluminum.
A cooler running spindle is a happy spindle. :)

[Joey Jarrard]

Yea I was talking about the o flutes