CNC milling · copper · two setups
Magnetron component
Published with the customer's permission.
The hardest milling job we have taken on — and not because of the geometry. It needs only two setups.
Where the difficulty is
- The maximum permitted corner radius is 1 mm, which fixes the cutter at 2 mm diameter. Nothing larger fits the internal corners.
- The slots run 18 mm deep in a part 20 mm thick. That is nine cutter diameters of unsupported tool. Past five diameters a tool is already classed as extra-long; at nine there is almost no rigidity left.
- Copper is gummy. It does not break into chips so much as smear, and it welds to the cutting edge. A tool that would survive the same geometry in aluminium does not survive it here.
What it cost
Over two weeks of machine time and more than twenty end mills. The part looks easy. It is the opposite.
Data sheet
- Material
- Copper
- Setups
- 2
- Part thickness
- 20 mm
- Maximum slot depth
- 18 mm
- Minimum corner radius
- 1 mm
- Cutter diameter
- 2 mm
- Length-to-diameter ratio
- 9:1
- End mills consumed
- 20+
- Time to produce
- over 2 weeks