[Jewelry making - Article 00198] - Re: [Orchid] Type and basic assortment for endmills

[Andrew Werby]

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>     I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Taig cnc mill I just
>     bought. Can I get some suggestions as to a type and basic
>     assortment of endmills to get, and where to get them. I will start
>     milling WAX and graduate to metal later. It comes with a 1/8" and
>     1/4" collet. Do I need more collets of different sizes. 

    Congratulations! The Taig's a real workhorse, and while it was
    designed for metal, wax is not a problem for it. It's good to have
    more collet sizes, especially 5/16" (the largest) and 3/16" ( usual
    in mid-range endmills). They aren't expensive. You don't say what
    you're planning to do, so it's difficult to recommend any particular
    tools, but a basic assortment to get you started would include some
    large and medium-sized flat-end endmills, both 4-flute for side-cuts
    in hard materials and 2-flute for slots. These are good for making
    flat surfaces which meet vertical walls at right angles; most
    traditional machining chores are based on this; it's also called
    2.5d machining. Make sure the endmills you get are center-cutting, if
    you plan to start in the middle of a piece of material instead of
    moving in from an edge. 

    CNC makes it possible to also cut forms with compound curvature, by
    moving in the X and/or Y directions while simultaneously varying the
    height (Z). For this sort of contoured surface, you need a collection
    of round-nosed endmills, also called ball-end cutters. They make
    smooth surfaces with many parallel passes; the smaller the tool, the
    closer together these have to be to minimize the "cusps" or tiny
    waves in the surface. Depending on the detail in your part, you
    choose the largest cutter that can get into it; using too small a
    cutter just takes more time for the same result. So get a set of
    ball-end cutters starting with 5/16" and going down to the smallest
    you think you'll need. 2-flute, 3-flute, and 4-flute endmills are
    all useful for various jobs and materials. 

    If you have extremely tiny details to get into, then you need a very
    small cutter; this is where the 10,000 rpm max spindle speed of the
    Taig can become a limitation, as the tool must spin fast enough to
    get the material out of the way as it moves, or the tool will break.
    Wax is fairly forgiving in this regard, as a tool's flutes can take a
    much bigger chipload of wax than of metal, but when you're using
    endmills at.015" diameter and smaller, there's not a lot of room for
    error. It is possible to fit a high-speed spindle to the Taig, if
    that's a major part of what you plan to do. 

    As well as flat and ball-nose endmills, there are other forms of
    cutters that can be handy. Conical engraving cutters, which have half
    the diameter removed, leaving the other half to act as a cutting
    surface, are useful for fine linear detailing, and you can stone the
    tips to soften the points, making something like a ball-nose, but
    much less fragile. There are also variations which lie somewhere
    between conical cutters and endmills; these can be useful in
    situations where the detail is fine but an absolutely vertical wall
    isn't important. Here are a few suppliers on the 'net:

        http://www.accugrind.com
        http://www.antaresinc.net
        http://www.bitsbits.com
        http://www.conicalendmills.com
        http://www.harveytool.com
        http://www.micro100.com

>     I have read alot about keeping the endmills sharp. Does this apply
>     as much to wax? Do I need to get a sharpening setup? 

    CNC NOOB 

    One of the nice things about cutting wax is that it doesn't dull the
    tools; at least I've never noticed it happening. Even when cutting
    metal, it's a lot more common to break them than to dull them, at
    least at first. And sharpening multiflute endmills isn't something
    most people can do accurately; the tooling required is prohibitively
    expensive. For the sizes we're talking about, it's not generally even
    economical to send them out for resharpening; if you've managed to
    wear one out, figure it has paid for itself. 

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

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