Question of the day??-Milling Plastic (acrylic)

Post by **makavelly** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 1:18 am

Forgive me because I am truly a beginer in the world of CNC. My project is to carve a 3d work out of a 1/2 to 1/4 inch of acrylic sheet. Can anyone direct me in the proper direction as far as tool bit, spendle speed and anything else knnowing. Thanks in advance.

Post by **RoutnAbout** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:05 am

makavelly wrote:Forgive me because I am truly a beginer in the world of CNC. My project is to carve a 3d work out of a 1/2 to 1/4 inch of acrylic sheet. Can anyone direct me in the proper direction as far as tool bit, spendle speed and anything else knnowing. Thanks in advance.

Here's a search using the words "feeds, speeds, acrylic"
Hope that helps... some great info and reading there

Post by **oxenham1** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:52 am

Make sure you get cast acrylic, the stuff with the adhesive paper protective layer. Extruded acrylic(has the thin plastic protective layer) has a lower melting temp and can quickly mess up your job!

Post by **Xxray** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 4:58 am

You might be hard pressed to cut 3d anything out of 1/4, that is not much to work with. 1/2 is better, from my limited experience trying to carve 3d in plexiglass, the results are disappointing, as the tool polishes the surface and it is no longer transparent - Which kind of ruins the reason for using it in the first place. Of course, you may be using tinted, I don't know ... I did ok using the same general tools & settings that I use for wood.

Post by **JimG** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 1:24 pm

makavelly wrote:Forgive me because I am truly a beginer in the world of CNC. My project is to carve a 3d work out of a 1/2 to 1/4 inch of acrylic sheet. Can anyone direct me in the proper direction as far as tool bit, spendle speed and anything else knnowing. Thanks in advance.

I've been doing a lot of milling of styrene sheet and I have got excellent results using carbide cutters. They seem to cut cool and I get no problems with heating and melting of the styrene, and styrene has a habit of melting when you use HSS powered cutting tools.

As for feeds and speeds, I have constructed a test sampler which covers speeds from 2500 - 5000 rpm and feeds from 60mm/min - 500mm/min and there seems to be no obvious difference in cut quality with a 2mm cutter.

Jim.

Vectric Customer

Question of the day??-Milling Plastic (acrylic)

Question of the day??-Milling Plastic (acrylic)

Re: Question of the day??-Milling Plastic (acrylic)

Re: Question of the day??-Milling Plastic (acrylic)

Re: Question of the day??-Milling Plastic (acrylic)

Re: Question of the day??-Milling Plastic (acrylic)