I have a shapeoko xl and need to cut tags from 0.060 styrene. Router is a DeWalt 611. Will be using 1/8" single flute cutter.
My understanding is very high rpm and fast travel.
Anyone with any experience on speed and feed rate with this material?
Feeds and speeds for cutting styrene
- adze_cnc
- Vectric Wizard
- Posts: 4325
- Joined: Sat Jul 27, 2013 10:08 pm
- Model of CNC Machine: AXYZ 4008
- Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Re: Feeds and speeds for cutting styrene
Styrene that thin, that small, with an up-cutting bit is in danger of lifting as it is cut so have it held down quite securely. A difficulty you’ll have if using double-stick tape to do so is styrene particles mixing with chewed up tape jamming the kerf possibly lifting the material even more.
To find “the right” speed it’s good start with general settings and fine tune them for your need. And a good place to start is chipload (size of particles in its simplest).
Looking up soft plastic with a 1/8” cutter you’ll find many charts that will indicate a chipload of 0.003 to 0.006 inches.
Your router has fixed speed levels according to the manual. The top three (4 to 6) are applicable (feed in inches per minute IPM):
- rpm: 22,600 ; feed: 80 ipm ; chipload: 0.0035"
- rpm: 24,800 ; feed: 88 ipm ; chipload: 0.0035"
- rpm: 27,000 ; feed: 95 ipm ; chipload: 0.0035"
- rpm: 27,000 ; feed: 110 ipm ; chipload: 0.0041"
- rpm: 27,000 ; feed: 120 ipm ; chipload: 0.0044"
- rpm: 27,000 ; feed: 130 ipm ; chipload: 0.0048"
- rpm: 27,000 ; feed: 140 ipm ; chipload: 0.0052"
- rpm: 27,000 ; feed: 150 ipm ; chipload: 0.0056"
- rpm: 27,000 ; feed: 160 ipm ; chipload: 0.0059"
Calculations made using online chipload calculator. Most recent versions of Cut2D have one in the tool database.