I can’t really chalk this one up as “made” yet but I guess I did make something. I started diving into the world of aluminum and still need to play around with feeds and speeds. Here is a partial along with a casualty (broken Amana 51406-Z)
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The easiest way in Aluminum to cut that slot is trichoidal, it is slow but very very easy on the tool.
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Thank you for the advice, I am definitely going to have to set up estlcam. My attempt here was one of many failed attempts using the cam in Fusion360 with adaptive clearing + s**tload of WD40. Created a total mess but found better results when compared to before. (really need to get some kind of cooling/chip clearing strategy figured out for aluminum). Will post my updates with estlcam
Air blast seems to be the best. Aluminum chips take most of the heat with them so if you can just get them away you should be good. Wet cutting is just a mess.
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This reminded me of the remarkably different behaviours between metals with regard to where the heat ends up. I heard in titanium, which we will mill eventually on the super-primo, all the heat goes into the remaining material. Curious effect. Does it have a name…?
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Thank you for all of the feedback on this post. I figured that I would post a little update - It took a little while to wipe everything down and get rid of the WD40 smell.
As per suggestions from Ryan, I have abandoned all wet machining options as it is super messy and probably bad environment-wise anyway. In a desperate attempt to get an air spray solution setup, I initially purchased a really nice cold vortex tube sprayer from Arizona Vortex without paying attention to the CFM requirements. Since I don’t have a large 3-phase powered compressor, I returned the vortex tube and found a more economical air-spray solution.
Everything is hooked up to the core (as opposed to the moving z-axis). As a bonus, I also hooked it up to turn on/off with gcode. Since I have everything out, I decided to also add the Primo Tornado dust collection system.
I will post more updates after everything is put back together and I can take another crack at aluminum.
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