anyone machined sterling silver before, i'm looking for speeds and feeds to start with,,
i'm going to be using 1/2 endmill for roughing, probably diamond coated, and 1/4 ball for finish, also diamond coated,
i'll look for your input, thanks
anyone machined sterling silver before, i'm looking for speeds and feeds to start with,,
i'm going to be using 1/2 endmill for roughing, probably diamond coated, and 1/4 ball for finish, also diamond coated,
i'll look for your input, thanks
Can I have the chips?.................I have turned it before but not milled it. If I had to point you in a direction, it is a little like 6063 Alum. soft and gummy. I think that if you treat it that way you'll be good. I'm assuming that you are not milling huge amounts of it and if you are, I definetly want the scrap! Although when you think about it, there are engineered plastics out there that dwarf Gold in cost by weight.
what are you doing anyway?
please could you look into wax investment casting and save the planet!
i can't say what, it's confidential, but the part is abbout 1" x 1" x 12.25"
can't cast it, too much fine detail on it, they tried, i machined it out of alum and stailess before, so they can see the diffrence between cast and machine,
and its huge,
save which planet, mars ???????????? lol
That's mostly used for cutting abrasive materials like graphite and fiberglass, which wear down the tooling. Sterling mills a lot like aluminum - it's "grabby", but it's a bit harder. I'd experiment with a copper rod to start with; if your speeds and feeds work on copper, they'll work on silver. A cobalt-steel tool will be sharper and less brittle than diamond-coated carbide, not to mention cheaper.
But I also agree with the folks who told you to cast it, not try to carve it out of a solid rod. If you mill it out of wax rod, you can pull a rubber mold from that which will transfer all your detail. Then you can cast a hollow wax, which will cast better than a solid one, while saving a lot of $17/oz silver. Just trying to recycle all that silver swarf is going to be more hassle than not spraying it all over in the first place...
Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com
thanks for all the infor form you guys, i don't know y the customer dosent want to have it casted, better for my company i guess, lol,
thanks