Is this doable?

[William1]

I did this tailpiece by hand. I have the Mark 1. It’s 1/4" alum. can the cnc handle it. What sort of bits and speeds should I expect?

[Chucky_ott]

I did 1/4" aluminum on my Altmill with a Makita router this morning without any big problems. 1/8" single flute flat end mill. Not sure about the feed rate. I just used what vCarve provided when I selected aluminum in the tool selection. For the router speed, I believe it was setting #3 on the dial (16000 rpm if I remember correctly) as per the feed and speed chart on the Sienci web site.

I had a higher speed initially and got some galling. I then used a cutting oil until I realised it was dissolving the adhesive on the double sided tape used to hold down the aluminum. I then reduced the speed and had no more problems.

Be careful with the aluminum cuttings flying off everywhere, especially your electronics…

[_Michael]

I have a LongMill MK1 with the Makita router. I have milled brass before and I just searched brass vs aluminum hardness and brass is generally the harder of the two. It wasn’t a large job but I did post about it.

That's not trash! (brass ring)

Funny how some things that would be trash are not because I own a LongMill. So we’ve been having some trouble with my mother’s pool this year and the last thing to break, stripped threads, was one of the nuts that tighten the band that holds the filter housing together. You can see what I started with on the left and it’s mounted for milling, after cutting off the barrel part, on the right. I like this way of mounting and using center origin for some things because the mill made the pocket so i…

[William1]

Hey Chucky_ott
Thank you for sharing your experience. Sounds like speed can be lower.

[William1]

Thanks Michael,
Sounds like Im good to go with my next tailpiece.
Wonderful.