I made a few clean engravings in some poplar hobby boards, but a few of them are less clean than the others and are a bit chewed up.
I’m using the standard bit that came with the D660, but I’ve only made a few cuts and it looks fine, so I don’t think it’s dull. I also don’t have a vacuum attached, so that might be contributing.
Any advice for what I should try first?
Below are my tools settings:
The dewalt bit isn’t great for milling. The ones Ryan sells work much better. Also, you’re going very fast at 20mm/s. Doing 10mm/s and 2mm DOC would be better on the bits, and you’d have more torque from the steppers. Also, if things aren’t completely level, and you’re getting a few extra mm on the first pass, the deeper, slower cut would be less of an impact.
The bit that comes with the DW660 is useless. I bought two DW660s and twice I tried milling wood with the bits that came with them. Nothing too agressive, but still the bits overheated and began scorching the workpiece and making nasty dust-like chips instead of proper cutting.
Toss them in the trash and you will save yourself some frustration and probably a workpiece or two.
Yea, those bits are basically high speed steel rotozip blades. They’re made for cutting through sheetrock around receptacle boxes.
I did the same when I got the dw660, too excited to wait for the new bits. That bit is really bad for anything other than cutting out drywall. An actual router/cnc bit will be miles better.
