Question for the metal heads. Do you use a coolant with the the R7 MDF spoiler board? If so, how?
Tried my hand for the first time with aluminium and it was going great till the part became so hot it melted the tape and moved.
I’ve been looking into a non-liquid coolant solution and I’m going tho try my hand at designing and building a vortex tube for my R7. Compressible flow was my favorite class.
However I still have a part I need to make while I’m working on the vortex tube.
Any advice?
Get yourself a spray can of WD-40, I use the non-aerosol one, only need a little, spray it on the tool periodically. Worked great for me when doing very aggressive milling.
Having said that though its quite possible to mill aluminum without any coolant though you will need to dial in your feeds and speeds correctly to avoid excessive heating.
I’ve also used alcohol in a little spray bottle, works great as it vaporizes very quickly, but it seemed a little dangerous to me.
I cut dry and blow an air stream to move the chips out. I find recutting chips and dull cutters to be the largest source of heat. Speeds and feeds are really important. Also, I have a really hard time clearing the chips on projects thicker than .250.
Yeah I’ve had similar issues in deeper cuts. Considering getting adapter for my air compressor to drive air at a higher pressure than my aquarium pump. That should do the trick!
Thanks guys, I appreciate it. I am rigging up my old aquarium pump and going to try that and some alcohol. I kept blowing chips off, but they still piled up on me before.
I don’t have an air compressor yet, but if this vortex tube works I will need a size that has a lot of cfm under pressure.
@Aaron_Troxel My experience with air vortex tubes is that they are very loud. I have one I use to test the cold running side of fuel systems when the car is warm. It takes a lot of CFM and is quite loud just to cool a small block.