milling speed question

P

projectorjcg

Joined
Oct 29, 2005
Messages
41
I bought a quarter rounding end-mill bit. This was put on my drill press and run at 3100(the highest) on 1/4 inch t-6 aluminum.
I am making training knives and thought this would eliminate alot of work in making round edges.

I secured the knife to a block of aluminum to give it some weight as I hand feed it in the Press.

What I ended up with was more work in taking out the chips created by the end-mill.

Question
Do i need to run at a higher speed , or could it be inconsistent feed speed and pressure?
What is the highest I.e safest high speed to run an end-mill like this?
The reason I havent abondoned the idea is that there are small sections that look awsome exactly what I wanted, but mostly it looks like dog-poop.

Thanks for your time
Justin
 
First off, STOP WHAT YOU"RE DOING IMMEDIATELY!!! You never want to put your fingers near a spinning endmill. It will eat steel, so what do you think it might do to your hand? If you're going to try and mill on a drill press, which is not recommended, you'll at elast need to purchase a cross slide table. Bolt that to the drill press, and clamp your work to the cross slide table. Anything less won't be enough to do any real milling, only hurting yourself. For aluminum, you want a two flute endmill, four flute will often clog on aluminum. RPM depends on diameter of the cutter, but 3100 RPM seems to fast to me.

Seriously, don't try to hand feed work into an endmill.
 
Something that you may find is that since drill presses hold their chuck by a Jacobs taper, side feeding will often pull the chuck right out. Not a pretty sight when a heavy chuck and an endmill are wildly spinning out of control. Milling is definitely best done by a milling machine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top