Re: Milling materials

>> I have tried milling Plexiglass using a Dremel multi with small bits
>> and had no sucess. the plexiglass tends to melt together (even when
>> submerged in water while milling).
>
> I have done some work in Plexiglas, using solid carbide pointed burr
> type bits. It is pretty important to keep the work feeding into the
> cutter. Feeding too slow definitely caused melting of the material.
> I have cut some geometric patterns into black Plexiglas, see
> http://ascc.artsci.wustl.edu/~jmelson/artwork.html for pictures
> of 2 of them. I had to pick the residue of melted plastic out of
> the groove after it was done. I did this with a little water pooled
> on the surface, which definitely helped.
>
> Jon

There are a lot of different kinds of "plexiglass", a term
which seems to be used to refer to "any clear plastic". I
make sure what I get is "acrylic" and cut it slow (@1820rpm)
with sharp cutters. This seems to work just fine. I recently
had to make a 1/8" cover plate for a split-screw housing I'm
making for a mini-lathe. I just took an irregular shaped bit
of acrylic, 4-40 screwed it on the face of the housing, clamped
the whole thing in the mill vise and used a 45 degree cutter
plunge cut to depth and then traced around the outside of
housing with the x/y. Came out perfect. The cover exactly
matches the housing including a tiny 45 degree bevel on the
edge of the housing itself (brass).