I’ve been doing lots of wood work projects lately that have turned out well. I’ve not done anything with aluminum since my first couple failures when I first set my R7 up. I’ve been wanting to cut some larger wood so am going to try out @Colin_Kaminski 's R7z mod. I’m having difficulties cutting 6061 again. I’m using a 1/8 kyo single flute end mill. On the hole boring operation I am using a feed rate of 300mm/min and plunge of 30mm/min, 200 Hz spindle speed. One of two things happen; sometimes when plunging the spindle will go down, cut about 1/16 into the aluminum, then the Z axis starts skipping steps on the Z axis. The other thing that’s happened is when plunging the spindle gets too much of a load and just stalls. I’ve watched lots of videos of the R7 with the 800W spindle and they have no problem cutting aluminum. I’m at a loss what to try next. Is it possible my 6061 aluminum is much harder or something? It’s sourced locally, I’m not sure where they get it.
Can you provide a file (cambam or fusion). And a video of what you are experiencing? It might help people troubleshoot.
Yeah, I’ll post them when I get home. I’m using Colin’s provided fusion360 file with no changes except for the tool (4mm cutter down to 1/8) and regenerating the tool paths.
Holy shit I think my spindle direction is reversed. That would explain a lot.
It turns out spindles cut much better when going the correct direction.
@Brandon_Byrne glad to hear you found the issue.
First rule of troubleshooting: Never assume the person who performed work on it before knew what they were doing. Even if you were the last person who worked on it.
AKA, make no assumptions that the basics are correct. Always go back to first principals and work from one end of a system to the other.
@Brandon_Byrne sounds to me like the tool pressure might be too much, or your spindle speed is too high. That high frequency resonance/squealing shouldn’t be there during cutting.
Yeah my speed was too high in that video, I was just super excited to realize my spindle was reversed. All my woodwork projects so far have been cut with the bit going the wrong direction which is quite amusing.
Now that I figured that out though, I’m really satisfied with the R7. Mine now cuts through aluminum like butter like the videos show it doing. Can’t wait to do some more with it.
The Z axis skipping steps is almost certainly a feeds and speeds issue rather than the aluminum being unusually hard. 6061 is 6061 for the most part regardless of local sourcing.
Your plunge rate is likely the main culprit. 30mm/min with a single flute into aluminum is asking a lot, especially on a hole boring operation where chip evacuation is already restricted. Try dropping the plunge to 10-15mm/min and see if that clears it up. Also make sure you are using lubrication, even just a bit of WD-40 or cutting oil misted on the material makes a noticeable difference with aluminum on a lighter machine like the R7.
On the woodworking side, glad things are going well there. For anyone looking to expand their hand tool or workholding setup alongside CNC work, woodriver is worth a look.
Bill
Hi @billsayshi! This is content that was imported to Maker Forums from Google+ when Google shut down Google+ (thus the gplus label), and the user you are trying to converse with has not yet logged into Maker Forums, so they won’t get notification of your response.