I'm an apprentice in the U.K. and I've learnt so much from these videos. I've pretty much been thrown in the deep end at work and what I've learnt about feed and speeds, especially surface meters and feed per tooth, have helped me so much when machining. I mostly programme on Featurecam 2016 but what you've showed us in Fusion the principles can be carried over when it comes to using models to machine features. Keep up the great content, your a great help! Thanks a lot

21:21 makes me think you've been watching Titans of CNC videos. BOOM.

thank you so much for leaving in that part where you had the incorrect tool length in. Helps me learn as well as feel better for my dumb mistakes!

You mentioned that little ridge you can get from following an adaptive with a 2D contour. It's a squirly thing in Fusion that I wish they would deal with. When you leave radial stock and set axial to 0 it will still leave .0001" of axial. You'll notice this if you go into the g-code or watch your DRO's between the adaptive and the contour. Your method of adding stock to leave is probably what most of us do as a workaround. setting -.0001" axial in the adaptive works also. However, if you deselect stock to leave completely in an adaptive, it will run at the exact Z plane of the part. I know you do a lot of great work with the Fusion team on helping to weed out the little things, this one would save a lot of headache. Keep up the spirit John! This channel is a lighthouse for the new folks.

I winced when the tool cut into the soft jaws. I could see myself doing that very easily. At least it wasn't into the vice! Thanks for sharing.

And a side note on those single lipped cutters. They're better for plastic because they are ground to apply downward force when side milling, so it forces the part into the vise. Endmills try and lift the part up and out of the vise. Any thin wall or floor applications, use the single lip cutters. Night and day difference

Hi John! I have to talk my bosses into sending me out for a refresher course soon(seriously need to re-understand some 3d cam paths and stuff) Ih and by the way, thank you for helping me out by answering questions a year ago when I was in a pinch. You are a busy guy with a heart that is huge. I appreciate that nowadays. Hope to catch you and the crew soon.

Nice to see my competition at work. Good luck.

That PEI stuff is "polyetherimide", similar properties to PEEK, high temperature resistance and solvent resistance. (Some of the fancy plastics have crazy properties - have you ever wondered what they make the little plastic bushings around the elements in soldering irons from? It's PPS (polyphenylene sulfide) and has a maximum service temperature of over 200°C!). As for glass-filled stuff, you get coated carbide cutters for abrasive materials - PCB manufacturers use them all the time for routing FR4 circuit boards.

MAX SPEED, MAX FEED! ;) Thanks for another great video, John! You´re my main knowledge-pusher at the moment. I´m getting inspired! Great job!

well, my first job on my 440 went well and it happened to be a nylon job. The customer was happy and my first check is on its way. I fought the nylon when cutting an OD and I kept getting a bad surface finish where it looked like the ripples on the edge of a quarter. I was feeding too quick. After a hundred parts I was wishing for a power draw bar and tool changer. I would pay double to have em today... keep up the great work on the vids.

"John speed".....I got to witness it live at the bash two years ago as you were showing Abom a display on your laptop and I viewed with awe as your hands went above warp speed...lol. Enjoyed the video

I used to have to machine graphite every now and then in my old job, as a material it is really nice to machine, a lot faster than anything else i have ever machined but it makes a lot of dust, but as it was only every now and then we would get the job the boss couldn't justify buying an extractor system for it so the way we got around it was using some larger bore locline, mounted the locline on a block near the spindle and then run a vacuum to the block and it worked really well. The same worked for when machining tufnol and cast iron but they didn't work as well but got the job done.

Nice walk through! There are also left hand helix right hand cut end mills that can help when cutting plastic… Thanks for sharing.

You don't need to waste time with those HSM tool paths in plastic (or aluminum for that matter). You can run those exact feeds and speeds with 100% step over. You basically can't run too fast in plastic.

Been eyeballing your various vids for a while. I do cnc with say 90% of the time with wood and the other10% with various non-ferrous materials. Different materials but almost the same process as metals. Overall GREAT videos I recommend for anyone doing or interested in CNC..

I find your soft jaw creation oddly funny and involved... First. You could just create 2 blocks, and use the part profile sketch to do an extrude cut into the solid blocks. Since it's parametric, should your part change and become non-symmetric, the jaws will update accordingly. Oh. And may wanna make a part template that's your softjaw blocks and just adjust the width between them. Second. When you create the work cord, use the center line between the two jaws. That way the distance between the jaws is fairly inconsequential so you don't have to ding up gage blocks just to gap softjaws. Just get some various diameter drill rod in 6" long sections, and gap your jaws based on those sizes.

Lol I had to look at that exact forum page for when I had to route 1" polypro. I've noticed that low RPM and the highest chip you can manage is your friend with a lot of these soft mechanical plastics. Gotta get that heat into the larger chip and away from your tool and material.

Nice John. You do have a great ability to teach and explain things well.

You can cut acrylic at 400ipm at 16k for roughing and 200-300ipm 18K with .015 stock left on walls. Using a single .25in O flute carbide cutter

Nicely done John, I wish I could work more in plastics. I believe circular pattern and mirror pattern won't be the same if you have asymmetrical features . Good tip on that loupe, I will lash out and get a new one

I always use single flute cutters. High rpm and high feedrate. These cutters work the best when they are working so hard that they are on the limit of breaking.

I'd mirror as you have it centered. You even have a construction line to mirror off as well.

Talking about the chipload on the single flute...if you have the horsepower, you could nearly triple the chipload on roughing because there's more space to clear the chip. Also with glass fiber/bead reinforced plastic, heat can be an issue. It wears tools out because the glass doesn't exactly cut, but rather rubs the tool edge producing friction and thus heat.

Very sharp cutting tools, 2 flute hs end mills and hs bars ground with high rake and reliefs

I love the abomTorque poster on the wall ! +1

The plastics with Gf20/Gf30 are great to machine and realy not as hard on the tools as one might think - Even a Hss tool will hold up to it quite some time as long as you take a descent chip :D

Did you check the dimensional accuracy between the plastics though? Especially after decking the other side off. A few of those are notorious for warping and twisting. Especially when they start getting thinner.

This video was brilliant. You talked a little about comparing hss vs carbide and for people who want to go more in depth about that subject i recommend to you that you watch The drill comparision video where inserts met hss. (spoiler: The carbide needs higher torque and horsepower. Would be Nice with another vide where insert drill meets solid car idé)

why are you trying to hide where you had already tried it? 5:03

Great video!

you're right with the tensile strength guess! these are defined in the ISO 527 or ASTM D 638

19:00 so much for keeping your tooling separate for what you are cutting! lol I enjoyed seeing all the various materials cut. Will there be structural testing of the various plastics as well?

Nice video, John! We do a ton of nylon (PA6) here and it was a big change for me. You brought up great points - don't mix your tools, use the sharpest you can, make a chip (don't rub or melt the stuff!). Oh, and check your offsets... ;) Best wishes, sir. Tom Z

"You need to learn to help yourself" is something I would like to put on our site instead of our numbers.

Really nice video about approaching unknown material. Plz note that there are some plastics (like teflon) you have to use coolang! Else, no matter how sharp the tool ist, it will melt instantly. Also it's really good to use adaptiv strategie for the roughing pass since it minimizes the heat. Also classic fail with the offset on the soft jaws. A bit pity since they were so perfect^.

hahaha while you were in cad making soft jaws i moved my mouse to the video and tried to rotate the part! to much cad for me lately lol

Good Job John messing up in machining is part of the deal.

awesome fusion workflow

4:25 It's the pumpkin all over again!

I still see HSS being sold for finishing cuts on deep DOC. Cool demo. I'm looking at a 440 specifically for g10 and carbon fiber since my 770 is down for the count.

generally the simplest tool inventory is two. steel and aluminum. coatings and geometry aren't compatible between the two. (alum oxide coating on steel cutting tools welds to aluminum as one example) Brand new, never used steel cutting tools run fantastically well in plastic. the relief geometry keeps them from dragging and building more heat. when you're done with cutting the plastic they go back to inventory as never used. aluminum cutting tool geometry is tuned for stabilization which has extra full cylinder behind the edge, lack of back relief. That drags and rubs on plastic bad. the best strategy for g30 and similar glass fill materials is decline to quote ;) shops that are really good at these materials designate their old clapped out machines for those so the glass can beat the tar out of the ways before scrapping them out or (sadly but realistically) selling the machine to some sucker that doesn't know any better. Not saying you CAN'T run it but seriously it won't be very fun to clean up unless you devote a lot of resources to managing it. costs not recouped by any of your aluminum, steel, uhmw, polycarb work.

You can press X on your keyboard to toggle normal/construction is fusion 360

I love what you doing.

would be nice to have the actual plastic name instead of the trademark name. nice video and cool of you to clarify some of the things around cutters, number of flutes etc.

Done a lot of foams and various plastics. I always look at the spindle rpm limit and/or chuck rpm rating and then giv'r hell. Feed rates i just keep pushing until i get good results. Ive had to "peck turn" many parts though to break the stringy chips up

We cut plastic on our router tables, 24k rpm spindles.... I really wish our feed rates could run fast enough to take advantage! We use lmt onstrud 0 flute end mills, they just tear plastic up.

19:04 Hey John. Seeing that step got me thinking that perhaps you could have the whole job setup modified and Jaws that are the whole length of the part. The lower portion is what holds OP2 and the higher portion is the step (maybe ~.080") that grips OP1. What do you think? That way you can just setup jaws and the G54 once for both Ops. I'm pretty sure the spacing of the jaws and width of part and stock will work out to do this.

The inside of your mill looks like my 7th birthday party

Very nice vid John thank you again. Did the something blue warning go off in your head when the whole machine was blue? Haha

That's a Tension Test Dog Bone for plastics as per ASTM D638

It would be interesting to know what the temperature of the tool was while cutting each of the materials. I would think and assume that the plastic with 20% glass I think would run a little hotter then the other plastics.

Plastic is great to machine but it can be a pain too. We use only Onsrud in in our shop.

Great video. Thanks

I'd be curious to learn about some feeds and speeds in phenolic material, like canvas micarta, etc... I'm currently slotting with an 1/8" flat end mill 15ipm .175" deep, ~5200rpm... Running dry with a vacuum sucking off the dust/chips. I don't have coolant. Are you using any kind of special endmill for the plastic?

Trying to find the best speeds and feeds for Inconel 625 Like to hear what you guys do.

Where can I buy these plastics? Specifically the first example. Any feedback would be amazing

Is there a button somewhere so you can get a tool call if I have two different tools but the same tool number? Like: tool call 1; drill operations, tool call 1; mill operations.

So what happend to the spreadsheet link?... Fascinating video - good work!!

its cleanups like those where taking on n apprentice seems like a good idea ;)

That plastic smile at the start... :D

interesting that you machined PEI. love to see if you could machine acetal/delrin.

Oooh, those staticky cling chips look like they’d be a pain in the rear to clean out.

Hey John, been watching your videos for years, way back in the days of the small apartment. Quick question can you though some dia of the 4" vise. I need a small vise.

For a first milling machine would you recommend the 440 or one of the larger models?

You could have bored under all the way through the bore the first half to size flip it then do last half.

Why didn't you use the soft-jaw plugin?

"Everybody calm down."

"duller carbide edge" is not a myth but it is applied only for inserts. because inserts are made by baking metal powder instead of grinding stock. if we talk about carbide endmills that has been ground from solid carbide rod - they are as sharp as HSS ones

what about machining a block of ABS on a hobbyist cnc machine?

I don't need you when I have professor google lol

Could you try some UHMWPE plastic? I've heard it's an arse to cut and the youtube resources on using it are not very good.

I've got a question, is there a possibility to mill pararell with Y axis? In F360 when I generate path to mill something paralell, the tool is cutting in X, I want it sometimes to go paralell to Y axis

I go 700 meters a minute at 75% of the cutter most of the time with 12,000rpm (I know the tormach can't do that but)

Eat a coin every time he says soft jaw. You are now a piggy bank. Mad skills tho.

If you want a sharp tool for plastics, use HSS!!! Much sharper.

What's the name of the cutter you're using on the plastics?

👍

did you make the speed handle on the vice

How much does it cost to CNC machine a part, thats plastic?

Hello. Can anyone tell me whats the name of the tool used in minute 16:56 Thanks in advance.

Theres no way the meassurements on the blue plastic is right, with the ends sticking so far out of the jaws without support.

speeds and feeds link is broken

Can someone link the excel spreadsheet please? Thanks!

Machining dog bones for instron testing, reminds me of college.

Can you make rail cart wheels?

hello elle sert a quoi ta colonne de mesure et ton marbre ? ;) some probleme with your height gauge ? ;P

Does anyone know how much mira x5 costs? I want to buy it to make my own wristwatch :)

Are you a brother from Titan of CNC .... Boooum 21:20 ;)

gwiserd

Great videos but I'm from the UK and I soon get brain fade when people start talking inches per minute ;-)

can i get such combs cut from plastic blocks? imgur.com/a/nRj5HX9

Americans PLEASE CHANGE TO METRIC SYSTEM!!! And also I believe you have to cut plastics with opposite direction that you do on the video. When you cut metal like you usually do on your channel you "climb" on the material. But with plastics, to have a smooth cut you have to go against the material.

Use DEEPSEARCH at the start of a search You get the lower layer internet stuff

overly engineered , for plastic just plunge with 2000 mm/min feedrate untill fulldepth then move %90 on radial steps.