Drilling + Cutting Corian/Solid Surface

[derekb]

I have been shopping the O-flute (Onsrud + Amana) bits as they seem to be the go->to for plastics.

Wondering if this is also the best choice for solid surface materials (as they are thermo-plastics)?

I am preparing for production + refining the design (see attached) on some solid surface input panels for custom machine controls. Each panel is equipped with a speaker that requires ~60% clear air to function properly.

Hoping y'all might have some advice as I understand spindles don't exactly love drilling and as designed there are about-a-million 1/16" dia. holes that will need to be drilled to accomplish this.

- 1/16" er-25 collet + (? special ?)drill bit?
- how to peck with aspire

or.... too much trouble for the effect....just change the opportunity to alter the speaker grill design for milled pockets or the like.

[Charlie_L]

What are your smallest diameter holes? A profile toolpath using a spiral feed makes great holes if you can have diameters larger than your tool.

[Ed Hazel]

You can drill them with a 1/16 drill bit, and 1/16 collet. Need to experiment with RPM spindles have less power at lower RPMS probably a minimum recommended rpm for your spindle. 1/16 bits are cheap if you burn up a few. If it not to thick I would just drill it in one shot.

That being said, could you jump up to .125? A .125 hole is 4X the area of a 1/16. You have a cnc why not get creative instead of a bunch of holes?