[roundrocktom]

I was happy with the job mine did cutting aluminum, other than the time it took.

Looks great!

What speed (rpm) were you cutting, and what size bit?

I'll use Castrol Stick Wax (easy to rub a light coat over the area to be machined) as it will help lubricate the cutter as it passes over the area.

That looks great! Often, when facing, I set up a 2" end mill and run the milling machine at 3 ipm for a very nice finish. I'm time sharing between the lathe, mill, and drill press.... so my ear tells me when the mill is done and time to flip the edge.

[Dirty Engineer]

I was happy with the job mine did cutting aluminum, other than the time it took.

Do you have any pictures of your router?

[DHay13]

I'm using a Bosch Colt router that was set on about 6 or so, I think. I just set it to where it seemed good. Not sure what the RPM was. I did the engraving with a .5 90* v-bit at about .01. Not positive about that. Would have to go back and look at the program. It was drawn up in Mastercam X5. A member on a forum (sorry, don't remember which forum) created the logo from a Google search image. I used a .125 single flute EM for the 6 mounting holes, and a .250 single flute EM for the profile. I also tried to use a .500 ball nose to put a nice bevel around the edge but it was starting to go out of symmetry a little so I stopped that one. That was due to my table not being perfectly flat.

Here are a few pics of my router and thanks for the compliments on the piece.

[cmadki4]

Nice setup man and nice transformers piece! Thanks for the pictures!

Now, 8 hours machine time on that plate? What do you attribute such a long time to? The final cutout profile?

Where did you notice the most flex during machining?

[DHay13]

Thanks. I was only taking about .007 at a time. That is about 35 passes to get through the .250 plate. Add in a couple of passes for the breakthrough. Each pass was about 8 minutes. That was about 4 hours just there. It took about another hour for the engraving ad hole cutting. I made 3 or 4 passes over the engraving to try to get it as smooth as I could. I also put a beveled edge on it. Probably closer to about 5 hours of machine time. I had tabs so it took me awhile to smooth those out by hand too. Total time on it was about 8 hours.

I didn't notice any flex at all. But I was taking very shallow cuts with a slow feed rate.

[cmadki4]

Does anyone have the actual machine mentioned in the OP? That would be the 24" x 24" version with the 25mm linear guides and packs (as opposed to the unsopported rail version). $2245 (w/ 10% off). I'm interested to hear how this performs on aluminum and your system configuration (router/spindle/speeds/feeds/doc, etc)

[cmadki4]

I decided to go with a different machine. But I must say Signal-seeker, the maker of these machines was super helpful in answering any questions that I had and based on feedback from you guys and a few others they seem to be pretty solid machines. Thanks DHay13 for posting pics and giving us your input. Have fun with that machine!

[wizard]

Hi guys;

For those shopping for ready to run hardware the February 2013 issue of "Woodshop News" covers the entry level and small machine market with an article that references many manufactures. Admittedly the article is short on meat but it is worthwhile in the sense that many manufactures I would not have thought about show up in the article. So if you are looking for a new machine and can't find the right fit the article might turn place to look that you haven't looked at before.

For example Oliver was listed and has a couple of very small format machines which actually seem out of place when considered against their traditional hardware approach. They also have a few manufactures I never heard of.