Acrylic polymer (Corian) feeds and speeds

Hey gents,

I’m experimenting with Corian for a particular forming tool. My gut tells me both feed and speed should be through the roof for this; something on par with a wood router. Does this sound right? Anybody ever messed with it?

My spindle maxes out at 8000 rpm. If the use case works, I’ll be making a heck of a lot more using this material. I was thinking about using one of those through-coolant speeders. This has even more implications like having coolant filters to keep plastic out of the tank and so forth, possibly swapping out my coolant mixture.

For reference, the stock size is 0.5”x6”x12” and I’m removing about 60% of it. Largest tool is a 3/4” and smallest is 1/8” flat. A few ball endmills for gusset forms. What I’ve got is TiAlN costed carbide but I’m really not sure it’s the right thing either. I’d gander 3-flute HSS might work just as good if not better than my 4-flute carbide I normally stock.

Un coated carbide or diamond tipped when you get to that point. 8000 will do it. Dry with dust extraction. Corian is a filled acrylic, ATH is the filler. It will not melt like acrylic as the filler prevents and big chip from forming. HSS will not last, cut life in seconds.
Pay attention to good dust extraction as the dust absorbs oil better than speedy dry. I spilled some hydraulic oil on bare concrete and covered the puddle with a shovel full of Corian dust. Next day all swept up and very little stain.
I run 18,000 on my router. Onsrud has a good selection of tooling just for Corian and phenolic.

My Father uses a cnc router to cut corian all the time.
He uses single flute, onsrud brand router bits. The speed is between 8000-10,000rpm, and 0.002-0.008 for a 1xD cut. (cutter dependent)
I can tell you my Dad has run the bits up to 23K rpm, but at that sfm, the bit suffered abrasive wear marks, chip welding (until he changed out the filter on his central dust collector) and within a minute or two the router bit still failed.

All poor machining choices on his part, but what are you going to do??? LOL

LMT Onsrud Cutting Data Recommendations

These guys are great help. They have Engineers and work sheet with all the answers when it comes to plastics.
Bearing Manufacturer | Bearing Supplier | TriStar Plastics

Richard King said:

These guys are great help. They have Engineers and work sheet with all the answers when it comes to plastics.
Bearing Manufacturer | Bearing Supplier | TriStar Plastics

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They machine lubricating plastics. I do a lot of that also. Tool life in decades, even with HSS. Corian is very abrasive. But if you have a heavy high speed router it can be machined very fast. My router has an air nozzle that cools the bit and more importantly, blows the chips out of and groove. Without that the cut can jam with chips and cutter life is very poor from re cutting chips. I cut .5" sheets using a .375 Onsrud, or often use a cheap .375 2 fl emil.

Hey guys, I have a problem every summer, the issue with galvanized tanks is leaching of zinc. This happens more quickly with warm acidic water. The people that have success with galvanized tanks seem to always have hard alkaline water or use the tanks for winter but with hot water this leaching will damaged easily, i tried a lot to fix it but it didn’t work i paid a lot for nothing so i thought it would be better to change it, my friend told me about a brazilian company for tanque polipropileno. Which leaching tanks with Corian, is that possible ?