Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] What is the practicality of cutting 1' x 3' x 1/8" aluminum on a gantry CNC Router?

In addition to the machine, you may need to think about the
practicality of cutting out aluminum pieces by milling. Milling a
slot the width of the cutter can be rather tricky - the cutter may
grab, the material may gum up, etc. Also if you use a normal end mill
with a helix it will tend to lift the work. So you will need to find
a way to clamp the sheet well and keep the cut out pieces clamped down.

The best way to do the cutout would be on an abrasive waterjet cutter.

The cheapest practical way would be on a bandsaw. If you have access
to a blade welder (or fixture for silver soldering) you can cut the
blade and put it into a drilled hole to do inside cutouts. You might
also be able to just cut through to them and have the saw kerf welded
up.

> Background to this question: I desire to (someday) build a robot
> chassis similar to those found at http://www.irobot.com/rwi/. My
> thinking would be that I would cut out the parts and then have a
> local welder heliarc the sides, etc together for a sturdy frame. The
> rest would be bolted together. The base would be 1/4" aluminum
> while the sides and rest could be made with 1/8" or thinner if using
> diamond plate. Assuming that I following my thinking, the next step
> is to cut these parts out. Since I have the parts to make a CNC
> Gantry router of size: 36" x 36" I thought that I might use this to
> do the job.

Chris Stratton

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Christopher C. Stratton
Engineer, Instrument Maker, and Horn Player
ccs@... 617 628 1062
http://web.mit.edu/~stratton/www/brassbuild.html