How many end mills does it take to figure out you are cutting UHMW and not POM?

Would you care to enlighten the rest of us as to why this is so signficant please? I don't understand what happened that caused the damage to the endmills? Im assuming they broke considering both materials are from the plastics family i doubt you burnt them up but i guess i could be wrong? What type of endmill did you end up using that both Did or Did Not work? Any other info you may have on the matter that you feel is relevent please share that as well if you would be so kind. Thanks.
 
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the 2 materials should machine almost identically.
i'm at a loss for as to what may have occurred.:dunno:
are your travel speeds too low? too high?
is your single pass depth of cut less than 4 tool diameters?
is the tool diameter correct for the spindle speed?
are you climb milling instead of conventional milling?
 
chips&more said:
Maybe spindle going in the wrong direction? The stuff cuts like butter for me.
Click to expand...

BINGO!

New setup and I swapped out the motor which has the labels reversed.

UHMW doesn't cut the same as delrin though, at least not on the lathe.
 
We call it " friction welding " , and it was strickly an R & D effort . :grin big:
 
When I first started cutting chamfers on the lathe on the backside with a boring bar, sometimes I would wonder why the cut came out so rough. Doh, forgot to run the spindle in reverse! Fortunately now I'm so used to it, it comes naturally now to run in reverse without having to think.

Er, um, wait, nope that never happened. :big grin:
 
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