Hello all, this is my first post, but I have been following this forum for some time. I'm fairly new to CNC, and excited to finally have my mill working. Anyway so my question, what does everyone do here about removing material from their workpiece. I'm currently trying to drill through a 0.253 inch piece of alluminum. I'm using a 1/16 inch 4 flute endmill. On each cut I'm only going down 0.2 inches, and a feed rate of 0.3 IPM @ 2000 RPM. So at this rate it takes me over a couple hours to make a complete circle that is 2 inches in diameter. I was hoping to start the mill spread some oil over the piece and come back in a few hours and find it done. Oh I also tied a vacumm to the side of the mill to try and get excess chips out. So my predicament is, when I left the mill and came back my bit was broken. It looked like when I almost got to the bottom of the piece that my vacuum wasn't sucking any of the peices up and it overheated and died. So my question is what do you guys use to stop this problem, should I always just stick around and suck up what I can with a vacuum. Do you think I should switch to a system where I spray vegetable oil on it to push out the pieces?, (can I use vegetable oil?). Any help is greatly appreciated. BTW, I"m using a base sherline mill converted to CNC, and MACH 3.
Thanks for the help guys! I have learned alot from this forum, and if anyone is in the cincinnati area let me know.
~Brian