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I finally stopped breaking my endmills on aluminum after 3 years
Last week I was running a job on my Haas Mini Mill in Portland and kept snapping 1/4 inch endmills every 30 parts. Turns out I was using the wrong feed rate for the 6061 alloy we got. My coworker Tom walked over and told me to bump it up from 30 IPM to 50 IPM and it cut smooth like butter. Has anyone else struggled with chip clearing on aluminum jobs?
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josephmartin1mo agoProlific Poster
Feeds and speeds are definitely key, but 30 IPM for a 1/4 inch endmill in 6061 might have been too slow anyway. Not sure it's just the alloy, you might have been running into deflection issues too.
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claire_hart531mo ago
Slow enough to gum up my sandwich too.
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faith_thomas1mo ago
Bump up the feed and watch chip clearing improve. I had the same issue running 6061 and going faster helped break those chips loose. Good speeds prevent that gumming up.
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