Poor man's laser

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First project with the Altmill. I wanted to test profile cutting aluminium sheet as a proof of concept for larger projects. I do a fair bit of machining on VMC’s at work, but this was my first time using a CNC router. Goals for the project were to avoid coolent, have minimal time into work holding, and not get chips everywhere. I’m hoping to use the Altmill with both wood and aluminium and being able to switch back and forth easily is a must. Very pleased with how things turned out!

I just used the 1/8” single flute endmill from sienci as it was the only single flute endmill I had. Slotting 1/8” 6061 with ~ .014” DOC at 22k RPM and 24in/min which translates to a chip load of a little more than .001”. I used the standard dust boot with no additional compressed air or coolent. Took a while, but had decent surface finish for the purpose. These were

first cuts and by no means optimized, but I thought it might help as a starting point for someone. With some experimenting I think both the surface finish and time could be much improved!

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Stacking dimes! Nice weld.

I would never post my welds online for all to judge.

I highly recommend ZrN coated 0-flute endmills for aluminum. Sounds like you have chip evac sorted. As long as you get them out of the flutes you’ll be fine.

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Nice work. Alumin(i)um is fun to mill and it’s incredible the amount of things you can think of doing once you remember you have a CNC. If you plan on using a petroleum based lubricant (which you may not need anyways), don’t use double-sided tape as a hold down. Ask me how I know! I concur about the welds.

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Thanks for the tips and the kind words! I’m keen to try some coated o-flute endmills.

As far as the welds go, picking and choosing which angle/section to show goes a long way to make it look good!

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