Introducing the Milling Feeds and Speeds Cookbook

We’ve had the idea of a “Cookbook” with “Recipes” here for a long time. You can click the Cookbook tab over on the left and see our various recipe articles. Simple put, they’re reference information that’s been gathered up about some particular subject. One of our most popular recipe articles (over 3000 visitors last month) has been our Milling Surface Finish page. There’s a tremendous amount of useful information there, but it isn’t all that well organized and I have a ton of material to add to it. Since it won’t all fit on a single page, I decided to drop back and do a special Cookbook dedicated to milling feeds and speeds and related information that has to do with maximizing material removal rates, surface finish, and tool life. This new section is called the Milling Feeds and Speeds Cookbook. Okay, we won’t win any awards for the name, but at least you have a pretty good idea what it’s about!

It isn’t all finished yet, but the Table of Contents and first four pages are now up.… Read the rest

Feeds and Speeds “Sweet Spots”

This article is an excerpt from our Milling Feeds and Speeds Cookbook, Basic Concepts for Beginners. Be sure to check it out!

There is a Sweet Spot for every cutting operation. It’s not a point that has to be hit exactly, but at the same time, it is not very large either, and there are penalties if you miss it completely. The more difficult the material you’re cutting, the smaller the sweet spot and the greater the penalties. Once you know where the Sweet Spot is, you can tweak your cutting parameters within that envelope to maximize Material Removal Rates, Surface Finish, or Tool Life. In fact, you can often maximize any two of the three, just not all three at once.

Let’s take a look at the sweet spots for different things, as well as the danger zones:

This chart is relative, meaning you can’t assume anything about the proportions or scale. Just look at the positions of the regions relative to one another, and relative to the idea of faster and slower spindle speeds and feedrates.

Let’s consider the different labeled zones, left to right, top to bottom:

Feeding too Much Chipload: As we’ve discussed, when you feeed to fast for a given spindle rpm, you’re likely to break the tool.… Read the rest

Updated the Breakout Board Page

I noticed a lot of traffic recently to my page on Breakout Boards. Apparently there are a lot of new CNC projects in the wings–cool beans!

For those who are wondering, the breakout board is used to interface between your PC or other controller computer and the various motor controls, relays, and other devices you want to control on a CNC machine. There are several different types of breakout boards and related devices used to deliver this I/O (Input/Output) capability, including parallel breakout boards, usb breakout boards, keyboard emulators, and motion control boards. Simply put, the breakout board has two functions:

1. Translate the signals used to run a CNC machine to and from the signals a PC expects.

2. Isolate the PC Motherboard from electrical problems that would otherwise fry the Motherboard.

These are both very important functions. Checkout the page for more information on Breakout Boards.… Read the rest

Back Tanned and Rested!

We’re just back from a family vaca in Cozumel, Mexico to go diving. If you like to scuba dive, Cozumel is one of the great destinations. We like it so much the whole family is certified and we’ve been going every year. This is our 8th trip since friends introduced us to the pleasures. I was definitely ready for it. My head was feeling pretty burned out after fighting my way through the basic foundations that had to be added to G-Wizard Editor to do lathe canned cycles. Now I’m back, batteries fully recharged, ready and raring to go.

Buenos dias, senor barracudas!

There are several near term priorities for us:

New Registration Server

For all products, we’re working on a new registration server. The one we have works, but many customers find it frustratingly slow. It is not uncommon to see some folks registering 3 or 4 times to try to kick it into action. Alas, it plods along at its own pace. You can count on it to do a batch of registrations at least once a day and usually twice.… Read the rest