It's a two flute designed for aluminum. I want to say is a 30 degree helix. Can take a pic later of chips and bit. A little oil may help from keeping chips from flying all over too.

 

Ideally I would like to get the feeds and speeds correct enough so I could go with no fluid whatsoever

 

This run totally dry doubled the speed to 1800mm/min set depth of cut to .25mm and z ramping to 15 degrees. Only issue I ran into was made my cut through too deep and my tabs too shallow. The part came loose jammed the bit stopped....much smoke from the router... hopefully it will be covered under warranty. But better surface finish! Amazingly the router will still run.

 

Was able to do another run last night. 1/4" bit @2000 mm/min, 16k on a half burned up router, proper tab and cuts heights. At 0.25 mm cut depth. I still seem to be getting some spots where it seems the bit gets pulled into the part...you can see that on the corners. If anyone has some insight on why that might be happening that would be great. Also read that climb cutting was the best way to get a good finish on aluminum. I have been conventional cutting since it is easier on the machine. Think I might give climb a shot but concerned since I am already having some issues with the bit grabbing or wondering in some places. Maybe more tabs and a few more screws holding down material would help? Any ideas would be great thanks!

 

Climb cutting with .25" bit at 2000 mm/min at 16000 ish rpm and .15mm step down at 10 degree and 40 mm/min z speed.

 

Looks a lot better What cutting tool are you using? Router, Spindle and Bit? Also, where are you getting the alum? Thanks Glad you seem to be getting it sorted

 

Using a Dewalt DWP611. The bit is specifically for aluminum and have had it for a long time but never used it. It is a .25" two flute. I got it from a www.American-carbide.com. There are a few sites with similar names this one has the dash in the address.
Edit: Also I cut this totally dry btw.

 

Joe I will check out you suggestion on the line. A single flute would be much better but the double was what I had on hand. I have a SuperPid but haven't had time to get that hooked in yet... actually my electronics are still in a cardboard box. I read somewhere that the gouging could be an artifact of the radius of the bit and radius of the corner being too close in size...not sure how true that might be. I was thinking roughing in conventional and then finishing in climb. Climb seems to give much better finish on aluminum. Thanks for the input! He is a link the article that has the info about gouging: 11.1.2 NC machining

 

Hey guys, in need of some help.

Have my C-beam built and I want to use Fusion 360 with it.

I attached a picture of the settings it asks for. I am currently messing around with the settings because at first it was moving a fraction of a mm per second so I am raising the values but have no clue what I should be looking for, or what the limits of the machine are.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

edit: I am using 1/16 stepping and the machine is completely stock.

 

Looks like your cut speeds are set to 1.3 mm per minute. If you look a few posts back you can see my settings.

 

Decided to go for some upgrades with the sale going on. I'm going to use a double xlarge gantry plate how do I figure out the spacers for the middle between the wheels. It's going to be ox style with a plate on each side of the C-Beam

 

Thank you sir Been watching you rework idea...that will be the next upgrade! Also did the double wide gantry plate.

 

Marvin -

I too am using Fusion 360 & CAM. On my 3rd ever part I was able to successfully cut 6.5mm 6061-T6 Aluminum dry with OK results. See gallery images and details below.

Hope this helps...

Brad - www.UltiBots.com
==================
Modified C-Beam Bundle
Dewalt 611
Elaire 1/8" Collet
1/8" Single Flute Carbide End Mill
Workflow = Fusion 360 & Cam > Chilipeppr > Tinyg
RPM ≈ 25,000 (dial setting 5)
Feed @ 20"/min (508mm/min), Ramp @ 5"/min (127mm/min), Plunge @ 8"/min (203.2mm/min)
Pocket cut = 0.25mm rough & 0.2mm finish, 3mm max stepover
Bore cut = 0.2mm pitch
Contour cut = 0.25mm rough & 0.2mm finish

 

Thanks for the help guys,

I have been watching some videos and learning about how the feed and rpm affect the result.

I have not had any time to dedicate to the cnc but the other day I cut out a little washer I made on Fusion and it worked... enough to work.
The first move dragged the bit across the board so that's the line you see.
I had also not leveled the spoil board on that cut yet, I still don't even have the router completely perpendicular to the xy plane.
But wanted to make sure everything worked before I continued fine tuning everything.

This was with a 2 flute 1/4 upcut bit. Only ever having used a router for normal woodworking purposes, I had never seen a bit grab the wood and lift it like that

 

You have to check your clearance height and if it ramps to clearance or goes straight up

 

Got mine yesterday !

And a few plastic bags later:

 

Big thanks to Mark and the remainder of the OpenBuilds Team. The C-Beam machine has been an excellent introduction to CNC. I finally got mine put together, at least far enough to make some chips. I purchased it intending to primarily cut aluminum. To put things mildly, my results "out of the box" have far exceeded my expectations.

This was cut from some quarter-inch thick 6061 from my scrap pile. My C-beam has a Makita 701 with an Elaire Collet, I used a cheap 1/8" carbide single-flute from Amazon. Feed was 600 mm/minute, with a 0.25 mm cut depth.



While it isn't perfect, the errors are mine, not the machine's. Squaring the axes is not something to skip over in the assembly process.

 

Does anyone have recommended GRBL settings for their C-Beam machines? I am really interested in seeing what kinds of accelerations and maximum speeds you are able to run reliably.

 

Rigidity is the major slow down on this machine. I started out with 1/4" bits and have had ok luck with them but just used a single flute 1/8" bit for the first time with some of the best results I have had so far. I used a feed calculator and the backed off a little. Cut at 250mm/min at .75mm deep and it worked well. Also the bits were really cheap on Amazon.
Autek 10x 1/8" Titanium Nitride Coated Carbide CNC Router Bits Single Flute Tools 17mm(1Lx3.17Tix10) Autek 10x 1/8" Titanium Nitride Coated Carbide CNC Router Bits Single Flute Tools 17mm(1Lx3.17Tix10) - - Amazon.com

 

This was with the cheap Amazon bits. Conventional cutting. Next going to try conventional cut with a climb cut set of finishing passes.

 

Mark,
I tried running one part conventional with 0.5mm oversized, then ran a climb file to clean up came out nice but still mic'ed out about .5mm too large. I have a good amount of preload on the z but when I grab the router and yank on it. There is some definite movement. I went through everything last week and re-tentioned every. It looks like there is slop in the bearings on the z...I have parts to upgrade to the double wide z plate... hopefully that will help but in the meantime am I just running up against the limits of the machine? Or is there something I am missing?