- Joined
- Mar 26, 2018
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Just wanted to open a discussion on what people find works well for benchtop class machines for CNC strategies.
I have a 2.5 HP spindle that I would like to take full advantage of. My machine (G0704) does not have the column stiffness to handle tools much larger than 3/8" nor does the 5000rpm max spindle speed allow me to run small tools really fast like a router table would. The sky is the limit when it comes to feedrate and accelerations for me.
I have found that trochoidal toolpaths with full depth of cut engagement seem to work well, but I have always stuck to 15% of cutter diameter stepover in aluminum and roughly .001 to .0015 feed per tooth. This ends up only using <1HP. Specifically for roughing, what strategy would you recommend to take advantage of the remaining spindle power? Would you increase radial engagement for a wider chip or rather increase the chip thickness? Would plunge roughing be worth looking into? I've always wanted to experiment with high feed milling as you can get high material removal with smaller tools at lower spindle speeds.
I have a 2.5 HP spindle that I would like to take full advantage of. My machine (G0704) does not have the column stiffness to handle tools much larger than 3/8" nor does the 5000rpm max spindle speed allow me to run small tools really fast like a router table would. The sky is the limit when it comes to feedrate and accelerations for me.
I have found that trochoidal toolpaths with full depth of cut engagement seem to work well, but I have always stuck to 15% of cutter diameter stepover in aluminum and roughly .001 to .0015 feed per tooth. This ends up only using <1HP. Specifically for roughing, what strategy would you recommend to take advantage of the remaining spindle power? Would you increase radial engagement for a wider chip or rather increase the chip thickness? Would plunge roughing be worth looking into? I've always wanted to experiment with high feed milling as you can get high material removal with smaller tools at lower spindle speeds.