Rant: My old way of setting up for a 6061 aluminum job was costing me time

Used to just run the same speeds and feeds for every 6061 part, which meant a lot of chatter on thin walls. About 6 months ago, a guy at a trade show in Cleveland told me to drop my spindle speed to 8000 rpm and double my feed rate for finishing passes. Tried it on a bracket job last week and the finish was way better, no more rework. Anyone else have a go-to trick for tricky aluminum cuts?

3 comments

3 Comments

cora86317d ago

Wait, you were running the same speeds for everything before? That's wild lol.

reese_nelson17d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah, the "same speeds for everything" thing, that was totally me. I mean, I just set my fan on high and my pump at 100% because more speed equals better cooling, right? But then I saw some charts about how noise scales with rpm, and it was a huge eye-opener. Now I let the coolant temp actually guide the curves, so it's quiet most of the time. It's way better, cora863, you were right to call that old way wild.

robert_lopez6416d ago

Is it really that big a deal? @reese_nelson seems to have found peace with it.