Anyone route Lamboo? Laminated Veneer Bamboo

Hello,

Was curious if anyone here might have routed out some Lamboo.
Its a laminated veneer bamboo. See here: LAMBOO® Architectural and Structural - Engineered Bamboo Technologies
Not sure if there is any other similar type panels under a different name.

Attachment 262246

Problem:
we need to route thru this 3/8"th material to accept 3/4"th Clear Acrylic that
will be pushed thru w/ a shoulder from behind.
Letter height between 3-7" (varies per letter). The Lamboo is just the background.

Could anyone recommend a bit to use for this. Some corner areas need to go as
small as 1/8" dia. Obviously avoiding splintering.

Would be appreciated to anyone who may have experienced this type of material
and could share some good advice. Bit size, speeds etc.

Thanks for your time.
Ronnie

I've cut quite a lot of bamboo plywood over the years. The main go-to bit would be any compression style bit. Typically, I prefer the mortise compression bits which have a little less upshear than downshear. For 3/8" material, you may try a 1/4" compression bit (I use Vortex bits). There aren't any 1/8" diameter compression bits that I'm aware of, so if it were me I'd probably use the 1/4" compression first, the clean up corners with a 1/8" downspiral bit.

Feeds/speeds are about the same as any other hardwood plywood. I'd go with around 15,000 rpms and perhaps 3000mm/min with the 1/4" compression (this would be a full width cut), and perhaps 15,000 rpms and 2000mm/min for the 1/8" spiral (not a full width cut, but bamboo is hard and may deflect a little). That would be my starting points, but you may need to adjust a little depending on your specific machine.

Thanks for the reply mmoe !

Been a while since the holidays, happy holidays yada yada yada.

Thinking of getting the Onsrud 60-112 - 1/4" x 7/8"cel and do a batch of test routes.

Lets see what happens in a day or so.

Caio!

Onsrud has 1/8" (#60-102MW) & 3/16" (#60-106MW) compression bits.