The book speed for most tooling is cs x 1000/pi D in mm. This equates to about 7 / D or about 200rpm for 40mm diameter. I would suggest that one of the most important things is to ensure that you literally wash aluminium with kerosene as you cut. The swarf tends to be very soft and powdery, and when I used a washing up liquid bottle to lubricate a bandsaw it formed a paste, blocked up and broke the blade.
Enjoy
Dicky Boast
Having never used one before I'm about to venture into boring some bearing housings in an aluminium casting using a vertical mill and a boring head. However I'm not sure of the best speed to run it at. My gut feel says run it quite slow but the needs of aluminium suggest that a higher speed would be better. In the absence of anything written about their use what's the advice from those in the know?
Thanks
Charles
In article , Charles Ping writes
I've always worked on the same sort of speed that I'd use on the lathe, given the same diameter and material. Seems to work for me.
I would look on it as turning, as far as feed and speed go. I just tried 450rpm and slow feed and get perfect finish on bores from .875"[feel I could go faster on this one] and 4.125". I tried lubricant no improvement in finish but messy, might be able to use more feed though. dry is fine, the small bores i do are blid, well untill i have broken into the main bore of the casting, the problem here is swarf; so if your in a blind hole keep an airline handy.. I was quite impressed with how acuratly i was able to hold hole sizes with the boring head, the little graduated nut didn't fill me with confidance.
I used the cheapo carbide boring bar that the bloke included with the head and was amazed at how well it cut, i have seen posts saying they are only any good for 20 thou. I am hoging out part of the casting at 120 thou a cut.. the finish isn't wonderfull at that - spose it's cos it's skinny little bar, finsih cuts < .01" for a realy good finish.
-- richard
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