Depron Milling

[barsam]

Hello to everyone.

I was wondering if anyone here have worked with depron before.
I have some cutting planes for a RC aeroplane mede from 6mm depron and I need some advise on how to cut it on my CNC router. I plane to use a 1/16" end mill for the job but I don't have any idea what speed and feed to use.
Can someone help me on that?

Thank you in advance.

[kzeyus]

Looks like I was using a .054 upcut running at 7K rpm and 4ips feed rate.

Basically you need to spin as slow as you can and move as fast as you can to keep from melting the depron.

[glenn]

kzeyus,

Thank you for the airplane download! Could this be cut from balsa wood?
Glenn

[kzeyus]

Really needs to be cut from Depron or blue fan fold foam. Don't think this design would work in balsa.

If you haven't tried one before, the electric foamy R/C's are a lot of fun. Since you have a cnc to cut out the parts, the airframe is only a few bucks per plane so you don't really worry about crashing and they can be built in an evening. Does take an initial investment of $200-300 to get started, but you can keep re-using the parts in other planes. There are lots of plans on rcgroups.com that are suitable for cutting on cnc with just a little work.

It's another fun hobby that easy to spend way too much on though!

[glenn]

ok,
I've been sold on trying a foamy plane...sounds like lots of fun!
Thanks, Glenn

[ilsaarin]

Hello

I am currently cutting mainly depron. I have made many kits, one of them had 1,8 meter wingspan and it was made from
3mm sheets. It took 11 sheets totally... I usually cut two kits at the same time by putting two 3mm sheets top to each other. I have managed to find a 1mm end mill with (almost) 6mm of cutting lenght. My spindle has 18k RPM and currently I can not change it. So, I have had to play only with cutting speed. When parts are small and cutting length is quite short, speed of approx 7 feet per minute has been good. There has not been melting to the blade at all. But with bigger parts this was too much. I had to drop cutting speed to approx 2 feet per minute to avoid melting.

Ilkka

[barsam]

Thank you all for your help.

Special thanks to kzeyus for the P-61 Black Widow.
I will post the MDC F-14 when it is ready.

Regards.