Hi all, I have a few total newbie questions so I hope you'll bear with me.
First, a little background: I have a Taig CNC mill that I bought about a month ago and I've been learning all I can about milling. I am totally new to milling and metalwork in general.
What I'm having trouble with, I think, is in regarding to layout, mounting and clamping. I'd like to know how other folks would do the following operations.
I want to make a basic part from aluminum. It's a 4" x 4" x 0.5" box, rounded outside corners and an interior 3.5" x 3.5" x 0.4" pocket. I'd like to run the mill over all sides of the box to produce a nice clean surface.
I've come up with a CNC program using CAD/CAM software that will do these operations, but I have not figured out how I should be mounting the stock, or whether I can expect to do all the operations in a single mounting or if I need to plan to move it around.
So, just to help me get a clue I'd like to ask you to describe how you would mount and setup stock to cut this thing out.
Some thoughts I've had are: Do I use thicker stock than I need, clamp it towards the bottom, contour high and then cut the piece out from the bottom in a final pass? Or do I have to clamp it one way, contour two sides and then clamp it again to contour the other sides? How do I safely remove the finished piece from the stock?
I know this is super basic stuff, but hopefully someone is bored enough to respond
Thanks,
Jason