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Machining an Aluminum plaque

So Ian came over again Sunday – he brought the bottle of Johnny walking black and the second half of his Christmas gift project. A man who knows how to get invited back.

So this plaque was for his dad, and was the word DAD with the A replaced with a stylized sail boat.

We cut the part from some 1/8in 6061 Aluminum stock I had in the scrap pile. After the part was fixtured we tried something new. Normally I do an air cut of a pencil outline of the part to be cut, checking the clearance and placement of the part relative to the stock. This time I held a sharpie against the endmill. The result provides a pretty useful way to visualize where the pattern to be cut will sit on the stock.  I am definitely going to use this trick more often.

After that we just cut out the part. My spindle was going 1280rpm, and we used a 12.8ipm federate with an 1/8in diameter end mill. Seemed to like cuts just shy of 1/16th of an inch. Once we had the part cut out Ian filed the edges and polished it with 150/320/400 grid sand paper on my surface block. Wetting fluid with Isopropanol and not water, but other than that pretty straight forward. I unfortunately forgot to tell him I had a scotch wheel – so he de-burred the edges with small files.

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