I've been doing pretty well with getting used to the lathe, but I have to admit I am finding the milling machine more challenging. It seems to me that the lathe does a lot of the accuracy work on it's own, while the mill requires a significantly greater skill level.
I was machining a piece of 1/4" aluminum plate about 2" by 3". I clamped it flat in the vice and took an endmill in a collet and milled along the left side of the piece. I went from front to back and as I got near the back, the mill "grabbed" several times. This is the right direction to mill, right?
For illustrative purposes, if I were to clamp a piece in the vice, the correct direction for milling the sides of the piece would be (from the front left corner) from front to back along the left side and then left to right along the back, then back to front on the right side and finally right to left coming back across the front.
I would never do it all at once like that, just trying to confirm I'm not unknowlingly climb milling.
And, on a similar idea, how do you mill a slot in a piece with square corners in the slot? All the mills are round, how do you get an interior corner square?
Jeff
I was machining a piece of 1/4" aluminum plate about 2" by 3". I clamped it flat in the vice and took an endmill in a collet and milled along the left side of the piece. I went from front to back and as I got near the back, the mill "grabbed" several times. This is the right direction to mill, right?
For illustrative purposes, if I were to clamp a piece in the vice, the correct direction for milling the sides of the piece would be (from the front left corner) from front to back along the left side and then left to right along the back, then back to front on the right side and finally right to left coming back across the front.
I would never do it all at once like that, just trying to confirm I'm not unknowlingly climb milling.
And, on a similar idea, how do you mill a slot in a piece with square corners in the slot? All the mills are round, how do you get an interior corner square?
Jeff