W.E.T. Re: 2 1/4 Makita Router

Hi Sam and ALL:
For machining Aluminum with carbide you can start at 200 surface
feet per minute and go up from there. If you was air cooling and
blowing the chips away you could go much higher.
If you do not know or have forgot the RPM is equal to 3.8 times
the cutting speed (in surface feet per minute) (and the last two)
divided by the diameter of the cutter in inches.
I think the recommendation of a .0005 chip load (per tooth) is a
good place to start. I was hand feeding a 2 HP unit cutting aluminum
and was only cutting 1/16" deep with a 1/2" cutter and it pushed good
and hard so you may want to use a smaller diameter cutter and shallow
cuts to start out. Good luck
GOD'S BLESSINGS
Bill

To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
From: fortyfingers@...
Date sent: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 19:32:16 EDT
Subject: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: 2 1/4 Makita Router
Send reply to: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com



I haven't used the Makita however I have been using a Hitachi m12v
which is
comparable. I've been doing this for a year and a half. Variable
speed from
6 to 25 K rpm. I'm cutting mostly birch plywood but also have done
alot of
cutting of solid woods. My router is 11 amp. which makes for a
drawback as
the relay on the PMDX-121 Breakout board is only 10 amp. Therefore I
have been
manually turning the router on/off at the beginning/end of cycles.
Perhaps
someone out there knows of a work around that would let me use M3/m4
and M5
commands for turning the spindle on/off.

Somewhat related but slightly off topic is machining aluminum with
the
router. Does anyone know of a good place to go to, to get info about
feed
speeds, depth of cut and cutters for this? I have a couple of
modifications I'd
like to make to my frame to allow working beyond the end of the x
axis so that I
could machine dovetails etc.

Thanks all, for two years of education
Sam

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]