I am using some 3 wing carbide tipped slot cutters in my cnc for tapering wood. They are almost 2" in diameter and 1/8" thick, made by ELENCO. The new air spindle I have will go about 50,000 rpm at it's lowest recommended PSI, I imagine the cutter will go a little slower, expecially when it's cutting, but I would hate to see a chunk of carbide fly off of that thing going that fast. I used to run 30,000 rpms without any problems, but I may have just been lucky so far. Any advice appreciated.
Max RMP for slotting cutter
Sep 12, 2004
6 Replies
I think you have to contact the manufacturer of the cutter for a max safe RPM. It is dangerous to guess. Without a heavy guard, you could be easily killed by a 2" diameter tool spinning at that speed. I computed 208 FPS at 50,000 RPM.
A guy in the area at an aircraft instrument shop apparently connected
24 V to a 12 V gyro instrument, and it exploded and killed him. I suspect that instrument gyro was no bigger than your cutters, and likely never got to 50,000 RPM before it burst.Jon
208 feet per second is a little over 141 miles per hour...
Erik
436 FPS, 297 mph
Which is right at the low end of target pistol bullet velocities, or midrange to most pellet guns. While not USUALLY fatal..there are enough cases to show that fatalities DO occur at that velocity..and if the pieces are massy or sharp...can screw up your entire day..and may take your life.
A friends 11 yr old boy managed to shoot himself in the eye with a BB traveling slower than that directly from the muzzle of the bb gun. The BB traversed the entire length of his brain, rebounded back from the anterior rear of the skull and traversed the other half of his brain stopping just behind his eye ball. He died a vegetable about 5 days later.
Gunner
Gunner
"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosphy of sniveling brats." -- P.J. O'Rourke
Hiya, Duck.
Can you use a smaller dia tool ???
A heavy or larger diameter tool will likely play havoc on the spindle bearings given even the slightest imbalance anyways, and the further out from centerline the imbalance is, the worser it will be on the bearings.
Yeah, that might be the ticket. Maybe a 2 flute router bit or something will work.
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