speed and feed for cast acrylic cut ?

[31fordvictoria]

First time cutting .25 thick cast acrylic later today. Can someone tell me what speed and feed rate I should use with a .125 inch bit with my dewalt router

[martin54]

Not really, it will vary depending on the bit used & the machine set up you have, you may be able to find info to help on the bit manufacturers website if they list chiploads for different materials

I use a single flute bit designed for cutting plastics, generally speaking you should be looking to use a slower spindle speed & a faster feedrate than you might for wood

Just to add you need to make sure you keep the cut chips out of the cutting area to prevent them heating up, melting & rewelding them selves to your material, if you extraction system isn't the best (like mine) then using an airline with a gentle blow aimed at the tip of the bit can help, it also helps keep the bit cool

[jerry carney]

I agree with Martin, I do all the things he said, JERRY

[FabLab Wageningen]

We cut 6 and 10 mm. acrylic. Cast, as cutting extruded acrylic is asking for disasters (material tension). Believe me, we tried....

We use an Amana 51421-K, which works like a charm. We have a 2-motor ventilation system, which is set to the max. That makes more noise than the CNC itself.

It is one of those things you have to experiment with. It will cost you the first piece of material (pity, since acrylic sheet is not so cheap) but once you know your parameters you can stick to them.

Marcel.

[NewAtThis]

I recently, and successfully, cut a sheet of 5mm cast acrylic with a Rennie 2.5mm diameter, single flute cutter with an 8mm cut length, for a dust shoe mounting plate.

This was cut at 18,000rpm with a feedrate of 1017mm/minute (about 278ipm)

[adze_cnc]

This was cut at 18,000rpm with a feedrate of 1017mm/minute (about 278ipm)

1017mm per minute / 25.4 mm per inch = 40 in/min

[NewAtThis]

This was cut at 18,000rpm with a feedrate of 1017mm/minute (about 278ipm)

1017mm per minute / 25.4 mm per inch = 40 in/min

Whoops. I never was very good at maffs. That'll teach me to try and be helpful by converting metric (which I use) to imperial (which I don't!)

[martin54]

This was cut at 18,000rpm with a feedrate of 1017mm/minute (about 278ipm)

1017mm per minute / 25.4 mm per inch = 40 in/min

Whoops. I never was very good at maffs. That'll teach me to try and be helpful by converting metric (which I use) to imperial (which I don't!)

You don't actually need to be any good at maths or know what the conversion is
If you look at your settings in the tool database you have it set to mm/min, if you simply select in/min from the drop down it will convert it for you No messing about in your head or with a calculator