Slotting Aluminum - Tips, Tricks, Speeds & Feeds | WW235

Slotting on a CNC machine requires reliable speeds & feeds!
Using a new tool from Helical Solutions, let's nail down recipes that work in a variety of machines. We'll also cover best practices and tips and tricks to help solve your slotting troubles. Let us know in the comments below if this video helped you!

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Links for this video

Helical Solutions
1/4" Corner Radius - 35° Helix, Variable Pitch, Chipbreaker Rougher

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Reach us / CNC Info:

[tarkka]

If you do have to slot deep, those reduced shank short-flute end mills from Harvey are a life saver. A ramping strategy really benefits you there too.

[RambozoClown]

Horizontal mill & HPC FTW, make gravity your friend. I will have to try that chip breaker endmill. Helical makes fantastic cutters, for sure.

[georgezarifis]

Actually I was watching Short Circuit just a minute ago but paused it to watch this video. I'm looking forward to the Johnny 5 build!

[jimsvideos]

Good on you for sharing your experience with everyone, and it appears we agree that a waterjet is a pretty good roughing cutter.

[stephens]

We do a job regularly that we use a 1/4" 2 flute Garr end mill 5/16 deep, 12000 rpm 100 IPM in 6061. One end mill will typically do a 3000-4000 feet of cutting. We tried a variety of 2 and 3 flute end mills Garr, Niagara, Harvey and we kept coming back to that one.

[Leadingedgeindustrial]

The chips off of the chipbreaker look beautiful.

[Sketch]

Slotting is just a quickie and not the full 2 minutes. The tool will want to pull into the up milling side and deflect away from the down milling side making a crooked slot. In my experience if you don't have enough coolant to turn that slot into a river along with some finely tuned cutting data for your tools, keep some pliers around (you'll know what to do with them when it's time)! I've seen a 2 ton 4kW knee mill starting to umph while I was approaching a corner on a 30mm deep slot with 14mm roughing end mill. The sound change is very noticeable but what surprised me the most was that the 2 kg piece of aluminum went from cold to untouchable within less than 10mm of travel until I had to stop everything and use the pliers... My tip is if the part geometry allows for it (open slot), tip the part sideways and use a disc milling cutter. You can go a lot deeper without much fuss.

[VId_Kok]

Yes! I have been waiting for that video ever since you mentioned on the podcast that you are working on it.

[DarkAeroInc]

Great video! Learned some new tricks. Thank you!

[brianropel]

Lately I’ve found myself slotting with very small endmills, 5/32 being on the larger side. I found I get the best accuracy slotting with them if I go about 150% of the tools diameter deep into the material. I’ve also started doing my “roughing” cuts with my endmill in a regular ER collet so I can blast the TSC.

[ardimarcs]

I love Helical’s chipbreakers. Probably my favorite tool from them

[multiHappyHacker]

Testing the 3/8 one would really help me out with my parts.

[salvadorebertolone]

sweet, i've recently been challenged by running a cnc router on aluminum the last few weeks. i have some full slotting recipes that have been working, but i just started to make a "pocket" around my part to adaptive out my "slot" i usually make it 1.6x diameter of the cutter.

[Thepriest]

Have you tried the 1/4" TAS from Lakeshore Carbide for slotting? I use them and they rock!

[Adrian-hxdq]

Amazing guys, thanks for sharing! hope to put this on practice on the machining floor

[ClockwerkIndustries]

Hope to work out some new more effective machining strategies with my 770m arriving tomorrow, I have been doing my aluminum products on my cnc router and it works, and has worked for the last idk 30 months, but as my demand continues to grow, the router became very inefficient and I just couldn't keep up with orders forcing me to miss out on countless job shop opportunities for my router, so many disadvantages when shit got real and I had to start manufacturing large quantities of small aluminum parts on my router setup, so the 770 should allow me to run these parts all day while job shopping on my router at the same time, while also helping do upgrades for my router with less downtime. So excited to unbox the 770m tomorrow morning!

[mattruth]

It also seems lower flute count helps with chip evac, even though you lessen tool rigidity. 3 flutes is still probably better than 2 in aluminum, but 4 flutes seems ideal for steel. I havent had good luck slotting with 5 fl in steel, but 5 beats 4 for adaptive anyday.

[neilwoodward]

I'm dead impressed with modern toolpaths. But I don't have the software yet. I'm restricted to slotting....But, as demonstrated in your film, the correct cutters have no trouble at all. I use Europa (dedicated aluminium roughing cutters) and they do shift metal very efficiently. As you say, plenty of high pressure coolant to blast the swarf out. No worries.

[pco]

This comment section is so nice, no slotshaming or anything!

[BrilliantDesignOnline]

Excellently covered, as usual; Thanks, John!