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milling fiberglass

Gordy

Plastic
Joined
Jun 28, 2005
Location
TX
Hey Guys, Happy New Year!
Has anybody ever done any milling of fiberglass? I have a 21" disc that I'm turning on a rotory table and I wonder what speed would be best. I have have done some of the work at about 1200 rpm,it cuts ok, but I wonder if faster would be better, I'm using a 4 flute 1/2" endmill. Any thoughts ?
v/r gordy
 
Gordy,
I used to work at a large composite manufacturing firm and we used carbide tooling and it would not last long. I cant remember what SFM we used but we spun it pretty fast and used flood coolant.

I would think twice about doing this job without flood coolant. Not only is it a health hazard it will destroy your machines, even machines near the one your cutting with. The dust created is a fine sand that will float around and stick to any oily surface it can find like lathe and mill ways. It is hard to see on the ways so it gets over looked. It will grind away at your machine every time you use it from then on, unless you dissassemble and clean everything. We ruined some nice machines and I felt sorry for anyone who bought one of our used machines. We also went through lots of coolant pumps from the fiberglass so machining the stuff can be very costly.
Mark
 
If you want the best results, use diamond tooling and turn as many RPMs as you machine will do. You will need a good dust collection system.
 
Gordy, my experience with G10 fiberglass is (and this might be contradictory to what was posted before me) is to keep your feeds aggressive and your RPM's low. I use only 2 fluted carbide, and I to used to ramp my RPM's way up but I found that I got less life out of the endmill (all the added contact and friction) and not much of a better finish. I don't have a problem with de-laminating with is technique either (and if it might be the property of G10, I've never worked any other fiberglass material). I use mist coolant on an open machine, and I just clean the ways down well after I'm finish.
 
HELLO EVERYONE,

Im a new member of practical machinist but have read alot of post on here over the years. I work for a router manufacturer and have some experience with these materials. Osg make a great router/milling tool for g10. We were running 17000 rpm and roughly 1000ipm and the tool performed great.

Question for anyone that has worked with fiberglass containing roughly 75% glass, we are currently exploring tooling for this material but want to see if anyone has cut any of this material. If so I would like to know what kind of coating and tooling you used. Looks like high positive cutting geom. wont work due to the high abrasiveness of the material. With that said we need something that wont require crazy horse power to cut as we are using 18-30 horse spindles. Also pcd coating is probably the best coating Ive used so far. Tib2 doesnt look like it will hold up in this material, due to the abrasiveness and the potential for high heat.

Any comment would be great.
 








 
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