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RhinoCAM is the best CAM software I've yet tried. It's expensive, but not hideously so. It is pretty weird that there's no good free 3-axis CAM software available, though...maybe with all the 3D printing someone will get around to writing something?
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Jul 9, 2013 06:11
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Yeah, ShopBot code is bizarre. It has one feature that I like a lot: you can specify a circle with a center point and radius rather than the circular interpolation arcs that you need to use in G-code. For everything else, though, it's just weird. Luckily, all ShopBot machines should read g-code provided you don't use any weird manufacturer-specific stuff.
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Jul 14, 2013 06:42
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Ferremit posted:A good mate of mine decided that rotary cutting was old tech, so he built himself a Carbon Dioxide Laser powered CNC machine. Cutting steel with a laser is the same as cutting steel with a torch or plasma cutter -- the actual cutting is done with oxygen, not heat. The (laser/torch/electric arc) heats the metal until it's glowing, and then an oxygen or air blast through the center flashes the hot steel into iron oxide (chemical reactions take place faster at high temperatures). The iron oxide melts at a lower temperature than the steel so it instantly liquefies and gets blown out the bottom of the cut. So basically if you have a 100W+ laser you can probably cut thin sheet steel with it, if you have a good oxygen assist system.
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Jul 24, 2013 20:11
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I feel like if you wanted to have an inexpensive pick-and-place machine, you'd do way better building yourself a delta frame. The entire frame, electronics and control system can be had for like $500, and then all you need for the gripper is a vacuum pump, a needle, and a little tiny stepper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYs6jASd_Ww And here's an industrial one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKW7LTKOhW8
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Sep 11, 2013 00:01
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Debated whether to put this here or in the 3D printer thread but it's really more of a hobby CNC thing. Desktop carbon-fiber filament winder: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1157143472/x-winder-the-worlds-first-desktop-filament-winder Not sure that it's worth $1300 when it looks to be more like $250 of parts, but still pretty cool. Now someone needs to build one of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DLr8qHliI
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Oct 3, 2013 00:45
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i think it's funny how rotors thread allows easy identification of those who post in the f.y.a.d. or y.o.s.p.o.s. forums as they begin to adopt the characteristic style even out of the proper context.
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Oct 21, 2013 07:22
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Sneaking Mission posted:What Is The Best Metal? helium. it's what the sun is made of rotor posted:I keep trying to find a machine shop that will let me dig through their scraps but this is SF and apparently there are no machine shops?!? there are a few I know of but none that work with aluminum in such quantities that they would have useful sized offcuts to give away. besides, if there were, you can reliably assume that it would already have been raided by burning men or w/e you call them
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Oct 22, 2013 02:04
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yeah a refractory crucible is where it's at. and frankly a small furnace suitable for melting small amounts of aluminum is really no more smoky and unpleasant than a gas grill, totally backyardable
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Oct 22, 2013 04:38
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gently caress. I forgot one parameter in my CAM software that always gets me and now I have two 5-hour jobs that were cut improperly by 50 thousandths. Fffffffffff It's recoverable, but drat
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Nov 1, 2013 03:02
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Yeah, while rigidity isn't a huge deal for PCB milling, you definitely need precision. Complex circuits have spacings on the order of 0.005"; even for hobbyist use you need something that can hit 10 thousandths repeatedly, and .001 or better is ideal.
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Nov 4, 2013 22:13
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For me -- I'm all about dry processes. I try to avoid things that require large volumes of liquid and toxic chemicals as much as possible. Mills make a lot of dust and chips, but cleaning that up is a lot more pleasant than cleaning up a quart of spilled ferric chloride. I already have a CNC mill, though ... if I didn't, and I was only interested in making PCBs, I don't think I'd build one just for that purpose.
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Nov 4, 2013 22:39
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CarForumPoster posted:Since tolerances are non existent for wood a lot of corners can be cut that cant be for aluminum. No, no, corner cutting depends on the tool radius.
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Nov 6, 2013 04:10
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I like to keep one foot on either side, riding it with my balls.
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Nov 6, 2013 04:33
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Cross posting from Cycle Asylum, I made some rubber parts for my motorcycle by CNC'ing a mold and casting them from liquid resins:Sagebrush posted:Finally finished a project I've been working on for some time. The modeling material is RenShape, in case anyone was wondering. It's a phenomenally awesome prototyping board that is also phenomenally expensive.
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Nov 12, 2013 05:03
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rotor posted:sounds neat but I have no idea why they're trying to make it weigh less Yeah, trying to constantly reduce the weight of a mill seems to suggest a lack of understanding of the concepts at work. Then again maybe the designers only work in foam and wax, and saying it'll cut steel well is wishful thinking. I don't think I'd try to do steel on a CNC without an automatic cooling system anyway. Realistically a 4-axis machine can do about 90% of what a 5-axis can with some clever setup, but I'd like to have a 5 axis yea.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:44
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MasterCAM? Janky? Well, I never!  don't even try to use it for modeling. it's a cam software and that's it. Rhino is the most reasonably priced program that's truly professional-grade if you ask me. Download the trial -- it's unrestricted except that it can only save or export 25 times. More than enough to get you started.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:43
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If you're using CAM software, not super long. A couple of hours maybe. It's a symmetrical part so once you've figured out the general strategy to cut one blade it's pretty simple to repeat it around an axis. Then again, I've seen so many goddamned turbine wheels used as demos for 5-axis machines that I wouldn't be surprised if some mill out there has a "turbine wheel" button that you just push and it makes one. I don't know if it's even possible to program something with that sort of 3D curvature by hand. It would end up being hundreds of thousands of lines of code no matter how you put it together, though, so I sure wouldn't want to try. If you wanna see something really impressive that would actually take several days of concentrated effort to program, even using the best CAM software available, check out these guys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S6NnNm-74A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnIvhlKT7SY Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Mar 2, 2014 |
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Mar 2, 2014 08:17
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Wild EEPROM posted:Seems likely that it would be possible to make a turbine wheel by hand, or to code a machine to. I remember reading an article years ago about how one of the major Japanese manufacturers (I think it was Hitachi) who received a large fine for selling a 5 axis machine (or maybe it was 6 axis) to the soviet union, suitable for making submarine propellers, in the 1980s. Well, it depends how far you want to consider "by hand" and how complex the shape is, I think. From the ground up, the process would be like this 1. design the turbine wheel 2. define the shape of a blade surface mathematically (with eg. bezier or NURBS equations) 3. subdivide that surface along a set of three-dimensional isoparametric curves 4. figure out which isoparametric curves you need to run the tool along to cut the shape out 5. break those curves into three-dimensional linear segments at the desired resolution 6. determine the entrace angle required to reach the first line segment with the tool 7. do the trigonometry needed to work out the x, y, z, a, and b coordinates for the beginning of the segment 8. repeat for the x, y, z, a, and b coordinates of the end of the segment 9. repeat this process for each line segment 10. for good accuracy, there will be roughly 1000 segments per inch of toolpath 11. depending on the size of the wheel, the toolpath could be hundreds or thousands of feet long 12. you must do this for every surface, so multiply this by three for the front, back and edge of the blade, and then by the number of blades on the wheel to make the whole part Possible to do it entirely by hand? sure, if you have a thousand engineers working for a year. You could speed it up a lot by programming a computer to do the trigonometry all those hundreds of thousands of times and write out the values so that you wouldn't have to. But if you're doing that, why not have the computer also do the subdivision of the isocurves into line segments? That's pretty easy for a computer. Then why not have it generate the isocurves from your surface definition automatically? And if you're doing that, why not just start from a digital model of the wheel so you don't have to program the surface into the computer in the first place? And suddenly you have a complete CAD-CAM system from start to finish. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Mar 3, 2014 |
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Mar 3, 2014 10:51
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rotor posted:I've gotten my taig mill + steppers + linuxcnc all hosed up. unless you have some bizarre firmware on the mill controller or something that's gonna be 100% a setting in linuxcnc. The mill doesn't know where its center is and the steppers just spin happily around as many times as you give them a pulse. you could just try resetting the software to default values. also if you don't know how to zero your mill god drat old man, get with it
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Mar 3, 2014 10:53
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The "proper" way is to set your mill's 0,0,0 at one corner with the spindle raised up high enough that it will clear everything. Then when you program your file, you put the zero point somewhere easy to locate on the stock (eg also the lower left corner), mount the stock in the center of the travel, touch off the tool on the stock surface, and use G54 to offset your work zero to the program's part zero. This makes your code general-purpose because it's all dimensioned from a convenient nearby location instead of way down in the corner of the mill, and if you want to make multiple copies of the same part from a single big chunk of stock (or you have multiple vises mounted or whatever) you just use the G55, G56, etc offsets to set multiple other zeros.
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Mar 3, 2014 19:07
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No smoke unless you're using oil for coolant, which you shouldn't be. Some splattery coolant on things surrounding the machine. Not much more vibration than, say, a washing machine if you're using a sharp tool and have the right feeds and speeds. Moderate to extreme amounts of noise depending on the type of cut and the shape of the part (eg, I was milling holes into a piece of 1"x2"x30" aluminum tube and it acted like a goddamned trumpet)
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Apr 30, 2014 21:28
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Audiot posted:Anyone else like watching machines crash? Set your zeroes properly, people. This one is my favorite, cause it keeps faking you out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZB8W81ae_g
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May 6, 2014 07:21
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Assuming you have both a 9mm drill and a long <9mm end mill...it would depend if you needed the hole to be flat-bottomed or not. If you don't care, the drill will be a lot faster.
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May 14, 2014 08:56
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It's always been echidnapiss for me.
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May 14, 2014 20:53
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Parts Kit posted:Yeah, I know. But SVG is great for graphics, and sometimes I want to engrave stuff I made in illustrator so I'm kinda stuck on that front. Use PDF, dude.
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Nov 16, 2015 02:47
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Parts Kit posted:How? Aaaand there it is, the reason I don't use Autodesk products. (Among many others). Every piece of software under the sun can parse PDF vector data, but not this one! Honestly, everything of theirs that I actually like (Alias, Maya, HSMWorks, etc) they bought from someone else. Can it import EPS maybe? Alternately, illustrator can save DXF files. Try that?
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Nov 16, 2015 03:04
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Don't know for #1, but for #2, the draft tool maybe?
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Nov 16, 2015 04:10
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mds2 posted:Any one here have experience milling brass? I have been trying to make a heat brand and not having much luck. I have a shapeoko 2. Yep. What's going wrong? Brass is usually one of the easiest metals to machine. I love it.
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Nov 18, 2015 03:06
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It looks like you're trying to do that in a single pass. Is that the case? What tool are you using to cut this with? What are your feeds and speeds? How deep is one pass of the cut? These are all important factors.
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Nov 23, 2015 20:14
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mds2 posted:Yes one pass. Max depth was .1" I believe. This was a couple weeks back so I am trying to remember. I believe I was moving the spindle somewhere between 5-10 inches per minute. I am using a Variable speed Bosch Colt router. I think it spins anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 rpm. The cutter I am using is in my previous post. OK, the two main problems are (1) you're way too deep, turning the spindle too fast, and/or moving too slowly and (2) the burr tool is probably going to make things worse than just using a regular end mill. I can't tell if you're trying to do V-engraving specifically or 3D profiling in general, but as other people have said, you'll benefit from a ball-nose mill. I would recommend a 1/8" 2-flute tool for milling brass. Carbide or HSS should both work fine. With your relatively low-powered machine that has a super fast spindle, you don't want to try to chew through the full depth slowly in a single pass. Instead, you want to be taking very light cuts over and over again. About .010 deep is a good place to start to ensure you have everything right. Assuming you use a 1/8" tool, setting your router to its minimum speed of 10,000 RPM will get you 330 SFPM, which is appropriate for brass. Calculate your feed rate based on the chip load: you want about .002 or so per tooth, so with 2 flutes that works out to roughly 40 inches per minute. Again, you're only taking off .010 per pass, so it shouldn't put much stress on the motors. Make your plunge feed rates about 5 IPM to avoid breaking the tool. For the burr, it's more difficult to calculate appropriate values because of the taper and the number of "flutes" with low relief, but start with the above settings and report back. So: 1/8" 2-flute ball nose 10,000 RPM 40 IPM feed 5 IPM plunge .010 depth of cut See how that works out.
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Nov 24, 2015 08:29
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mds2 posted:Anyway here is a board with a lot of screw ups. The initial problem I had was the speed. My shapeoko just cant run very fast and produce good results. Two of those, with the really squirrly cuts, are where I thought I had all the speed settings in the gcode file changed but actually did not. Another problem, it seemed like I was getting some chipout in the mdf, screwing up the results. You also see some burning and other things where I experimented with spindle RPM as well as travel speed. We have a couple of industrial CNC routers (ShopBots, if you're curious) and we have no problem using a 1/4" 2-flute tool to take a 1/4" deep pass at 100 IPM / 12kRPM in MDF or any soft-ish wood. If your shapeoko can do a similar spindle speed, you should be able to match our feedrate if you take a shallower cut. (Depth of cut is a factor of your spindle horsepower and tool rigidity more than anything else). In the chipped/wobbly sections, you may be taking too deep a cut. Also might just be a side effect of the material; I personally don't like working with MDF unless I have to. Try the machinable wax as suggested, or just go straight for a block of HDPE (plastic cutting boards are a good cheap source). Working in plastic really helps you learn about speeds, because too fast and you'll bog down, too slow and the material melts. In the burned sections, you're traveling too slowly for whatever spindle speed you had set. Either slow down the router or increase the feed. If increasing the feed makes it choppy, decrease the depth of cut. The one in the lower left looks like your tool had some kind of absurd runout, but you would have noticed that, I hope. It's probably just fuzz. Remember: - set the spindle speed based on the tool diameter and the material's ideal SFPM - set the feed rate based on the chip load, number of flutes, and spindle speed - start with a small depth of cut (.020 ish for a quarter-inch mill) and crank it up until your machine runs out of power and starts chattering, or until the tool starts to deflect. For metals, you probably don't want to go more than 40% of the tool diameter. In soft materials where tool deflection is less of an issue, you can keep pushing the tool to 100% of the diameter (soft woods, plastics) or even more (machining wax, foams). Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Dec 5, 2015 |
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Dec 5, 2015 08:21
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I found an awesome old machinists' apprentice manual put out by South Bend in 1937. Reading through the whole thing and discovering lots of cool stuff I didn't know about lathes. Amazing what you can do with them given clever setup -- they really are the universal tool. Like, I bet you didn't know that you can sharpen an entire reel lawnmower in one shot? And it has step-by-step instructions on annealing and hardening (including case-hardening) steel for any time you need to make your own tools truly from scratch. Great stuff. Also, the book has been really impressing on me how important it is, when machining steel, to use plenty of lard. 
Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 07:27
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The calculators you find online are meant for production facilities where you need to optimize both cycle time and tool life because they affect your bottom line. For the hobbyist who doesn't care if a part takes twice as long as it theoretically could, or who wouldn't wear out a tool in a year of use, the specifics don't matter anywhere near as much. Get the chip load right, take a light cut, and all the rest just dial in based on the sound.
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Feb 20, 2016 20:02
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Spin forming is done on a lathe, or lathe-like tool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_spinning Knurling and thread-forming are also technically non-subtractive processes, though sometimes you might end up scraping off some material. I think there are also tools used specifically for work-hardening pieces under power. Swaging tools and stuff like that.
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Mar 10, 2016 09:18
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Fusion 360 is the only good CAM available for under $2000. The fact that it's free (until you start making $100,000 revenue/yr, I think) is just an extra bonus. sharkytm posted:Or scrap aluminum extrusion/castings/scrap. Hit your local machine shop, I'll be they'd give you a bucket of the stuff. I pay like $3/lb at the local scrapyard for good aluminum drops, so scrap has to be less than that. Just FYI, extrusion aluminum and casting aluminum are different grades. If you want the best results when casting (fewest voids, best flow, least contraction, etc) then you want to start with a casting alloy. The other poster's suggestion to melt down trashed aluminum alloy wheels (or other cast aluminum engine parts, e.g. valve covers) is the correct way to go. Extrusions aren't a bad feedstock, but you can do better.
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Apr 12, 2016 09:25
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It wasn't available in 2013. Fusion CAM is a relatively new product. (though from what I can tell, it uses the same engine as HSMWorks, which Autodesk bought about two years ago)
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Apr 13, 2016 07:37
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JawnV6 posted:Is any of Autodesk's Pier 9 stuff publicly accessible? I visited a company there for an interview, neat stuff back there. No. You have to be an Autodesk employee or an artist-in-residence to use the facilities.
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Apr 14, 2016 08:21
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That works fine if you're okay with holes in the middle of your part, or cutting it out of a block at the end. Tabs/bridges are necessary for more complicated pieces.
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Apr 19, 2016 22:42
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Basic home machine shop metrology equipment: Machinist's square 6-inch caliper (I prefer dial, but digital is fine) 0.001" dial indicator and magnetic base 0-1" micrometer (0.0005" or better) set of 1-2-3 blocks
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May 7, 2016 04:55
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If you're wanting to learn about machining metal, there's no real solution other than making metal chips, yeah. Especially if you're trying to achieve a good surface finish on aluminum -- that's so dependent on your cut parameters that you wouldn't learn anything useful from cutting other materials. Go to a scrapyard and see if you can buy twenty pounds of random aluminum junk or something. Hacksaw up a cast alloy wheel and practice facing and squaring up the pieces.
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Aug 30, 2016 04:01
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