Thread: Sterling Dump
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Old 02-19-2011, 07:50 PM
Heavy Metal Heavy Metal is offline
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Default Re: Sterling Dump

Quote:
Originally Posted by tc1cat View Post
With the speeds and feeds you are trying to run, you really need some form of coolant/lubricant on the endmill and part. 10K rpm on any type of end mill in metal needs to be cooled. If the aluminum doesn't heat up and grab the tool, the endmill will fill up with metal and then break. Must cool the metal and endmill and try to remove the metal chips from the tool and tool path. Coolant does make a mess but it is the only way to do high speed machining. You should actually flood the end mill with coolant for these speeds and feeds.

Lynn
Thanks Lynn. I keep reading that these miniature endmills need high RPM but I think I was having the exact problem you are describing w/ grabbing and flutes filling, etc. Particularly w/ 4 flute. I am now running around 4300 RPM even w/ .0625 end mill and I installed the cool mist system which I think is helping too. I did run 10,500 with mist coolant on the super miniature .015 and that went really well for cutting another Sterling S logo. Had some decent results all around cutting another grill today but still ended up chipping flutes off the .0625 which I think was due to feed rate too fast when plunging to next level on pockets. I thought my CAM software had the feeds slowed down for plunging to next level but it was same as horizontal cut so pretty confident I can finally have some clean passes on this part if I figure that out. Thanks again for taking time to share your thoughts on this stuff....helps a lot. Joe
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