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CNC Milling Alumina

agoel

Plastic
Joined
Apr 27, 2018
I'm trying to find a CNC mill, hopefully tabletop, to cut some sintered Alumina. Most people say you need diamond cutters and lots of coolant. Any advice on what sort of spindle speeds and feed rates I will need to cut at?
 
You are not going to mill sintered alumina. That's aluminum oxide, or sapphire, and is a common high-grade abrasive. You will need to grind it with diamond abrasives (NOT diamond coated cutting tools) and lots of water or cutting fluid. It will be a very slow and difficult process. The machine will need to be very precise and rigid to produce acceptable results.
 
I used to send out boatloads of Alumina to a laser machining house. It was dirt cheap and extremely accurate. They could drill .010 dia holes in .060 thick substrates, and to them that was a big hole.
 
I used to send out boatloads of Alumina to a laser machining house. It was dirt cheap and extremely accurate. They could drill .010 dia holes in .060 thick substrates, and to them that was a big hole.

+1 By not later than the early 1970's lasers were drilling smaller dia. holes into gem-grade Diamonds that sometimes had one to several small Carbon inclusions.

Drilled hole reached the Carbon, it was vaporized. The holes could be seen under a loupe, but the Diamond otherwise looked clearer and cleaner.

That fetched enough better price to pay for the laser work.

The process could not have been all that costly, as most of the diamonds were under $100 each to the trade after "repair".
 
Seriously a tabletop for sintered alumina? You have no idea what you are doing?
What is your budjet and how many parts? Should be much smarter to buy the service than try to do it in house without no previous experience.
It will be cheaper in the long run.

Marko
 








 
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