Shame Tom but it was a nice piece. I've a kinda' love hate relationship working with aluminum.
Rick C..
Rick C..
I have a shop buddy I borrow a 12" table from on occasion and you're right about lifting it! It's best to plan ahead and know where you're gonna put it back down.Bill, I take it you don't have a rotary table?.
Take a picture of your machine and the setup? Should be able to go .030 at least. What do you have for cooling? Might be worth investing in a kool-mist or making your own to help blow those chips out. If not you could rough it with a saw.If procrastination was an Olympic sport I'd be a serious contender for gold. But I was feelin' fussy yesterday so I got right to work in my cylinder head. Four mounting holes 1st.
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Without removing it from the vise I was able to check myself by dropping a standard head on ... and doesn't that look a little small!
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To do the slots necessary to create fins I need to use a long and very slender endmill. It's only .155 in dia and I gotta reach in there a half inch deep. Tom can probably guess what happened next. I snapped that puppy right off on the 1st cut! It barely went a little sideways and tink ... it was gone.
Thankfully it was double ended so I have one more opportunity to fail.
One problem was I forgot to crank the spindle speed up. Little mills need high rpm. The other is the .025 cut I thought would be fine in aluminum might've been too much. With only one end of the end mill left I've been pussyfootin' my way thru with 10 thou cuts and making progress now.
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At 10 thou a cut it takes 50 cuts to cut a half inch deep! Another fine mess I got myself into, , but I'll get it done. Now I know why they cast these things ....