Last time I milled the bottom half of a raspberry pi box from cherry. It went well, but after a very wet winter, the cherry was obviously a little damp. Brought indoors, it dried and warped :-/
Today I decided to go with the pibow multi-layer case cut from some hdpe sheet.
Things went OK, on the bright side I could run the spindle down at 6000rpm and didn’t have any melting problems. However I tried to push it a little fast and one of the x axis motors started stalling on one of the layers.
I think it went well enough. Tomorrow I’ll try to get through more layers and look at cleaning up the edges of the cuts.
@John_Bump good question. I have been using a 10mm straight edge router bit that I’ve had for ages, not sure what it’s made of. And also a 3mm carbide bit. Any burning I put down to not running fast enough or running the rpm to high. Certainly I’ve not had burning bad enough I can’t just sand back to a nice finish.
@John_Bump
High RPM can lead to increased friction which would tend to increase heat. Often the solution is to increase feed rate. I suppose it works with wood a bit like metal where the chips themselves carry heat away from the work zone.
The part I find frustrating is that with my wood router, that bit’s spinning at like 12000 rpm and goes through the wood like butter. My mill can’t even do 12000 rpm, yet still manages to burn the wood and beat up the HSS bit, coating it in this dark orange/black sticky junk that makes it not cut right anymore.
@John_Bump
You might want to try some kind of a dry lubricant spray on your bits to keep them from getting fouled. Or maybe the finish on the bits is just not slick enough? Strange things work. One trick scroll saw users employ is putting clear packing tape over jobs. The tape glue acts like a lubricant and keeps wood from burning. I know it sounds crazy but it works.
