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Does it cut aluminum? Yes.

Is it a good idea? Well...

I broke a .113" drill bit. As the bit goes through the back of the plate it starts to grab and it bogs down the router. Machine flex also may be a factor, but regardless, drilling seems like a bad idea.

Milling went okay. The hole sizes came out pretty accurate, but the outer circle isn't very round. 0.015" difference between the smallest and largest diameter. Not sure whether that's flex or a calibration issue. Will have to do some digging...

Regardless, I have car parts now that I didn't have 2 hours ago. 👍

IMG_20170728_180613.jpg

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2 hours ago, Jeff said:

...drilling aluminum should be easy for every machine.

I don't know about that one. If I put a dial indicator on router and push on it with my finger, it only takes a couple pounds of force to get .010" of deflection. The deflection causes the angle and position of the spindle to change relative to the table, which puts a lot of bad mojo into a drill bit that's spinning 15-30k rpm. A big part of the problem is the plastic mounting bracket for the spindle, but there is still a fair amount of deflection in the frame itself. It's a router table, not a vertical machining center.

http://www.probotix.com/COMET-CNC-ROUTER

However, my fear of the twisty frame and bogging router rpms has caused me to lower my feed rates too much. On the last cut the bit was getting gummed up, presumably because the chips are getting melty. Speeding the feed back up actually made it cut better. When I get some free time, I'll put another piece of aluminum on there and let'er eat, but I'm fairly sure it will just snap the bit.

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I have had drill bits deflect about 3degrees without breaking (when drilling into an angle with no spot drill) tooling makes a difference. As for milling with a router table what I had found useful in routers and milling centers is setting up an air blast that point directly on the milling or drill bit to clear the chips. When machining on unstable work pieces or machines of will greatly benefit the job. Worst thing for tool life is double cutting chips and starts to bind in the flutes ( melty chips). Since you can't use a flood coolant on your router use air. A air gun from a compressor would work if you wanted to hold it. Also get coated end mills the will help tremendously with chips not clogging the flutes up.

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