CCC
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2006
- Location
- Central Illinois
I've agreed to run a set of injection molding plates on our CNC mill. This is for a prototype mold for an ABS case, two sets of two plates made from aluminum. The customer, another university department, is writing the code and even supplying the tooling, so I don't have too much to worry about.
Except that the collective moldmaking experience between all of us is about 40 hours that I had way back in a previous job. I'm fine with draft angles, pins, and so on, but they're asking if I agree with their tooling choices and toolpaths, and I can't give them much help. They realize that the risk is all theirs, but I want this to be successful and feel I need a bit more base knowledge.
Some specific questions:
- What's the best way to create corner fillets at the bottom of the mold? I'm thinking multiple passes with a ball end mill smaller than the fillet. They want to go one pass at the ball radius.
- How about blending the fillets into a flat floor? Use the same ball end mill to cut the floor, or a square end mill?
- How large of tool marks can I reasonably leave for hand work?
Please don't tell me I should farm it out--it's not that kind of job. But if there are other pitfalls I should know about, I'd welcome the input.
Except that the collective moldmaking experience between all of us is about 40 hours that I had way back in a previous job. I'm fine with draft angles, pins, and so on, but they're asking if I agree with their tooling choices and toolpaths, and I can't give them much help. They realize that the risk is all theirs, but I want this to be successful and feel I need a bit more base knowledge.
Some specific questions:
- What's the best way to create corner fillets at the bottom of the mold? I'm thinking multiple passes with a ball end mill smaller than the fillet. They want to go one pass at the ball radius.
- How about blending the fillets into a flat floor? Use the same ball end mill to cut the floor, or a square end mill?
- How large of tool marks can I reasonably leave for hand work?
Please don't tell me I should farm it out--it's not that kind of job. But if there are other pitfalls I should know about, I'd welcome the input.