Aluminum Paintball Trigger Plate(s) - Cut and Anodized

[EricDobroveanu]

@Earwigger

when you are a profiling your triggers, you are actually using a “pocket” toolpath right? Folks might be trying to cut pieces out using a profile cut which leaves no wiggle room for your end mill. I learned from your work to create a pocket around the profile which reduces chatter and enhances chip removal. I don’t use Easel so I don’t know if it supports pockets v. profiles, but that trick drastically improved my ability to get a nice enough finish in thicker aluminum. That and a much more powerful spindle.

Yes! MeshCAM has a “machining margin” option and that specifies how wide the roughing pass is going to be. It doesn’t let you go less than the width of your bit, in the video I have a margin of .135, I think. In that video I am making 3 passes along the outer contour. The first and second passes alternate, the first to remove a slot’s worth of material, and the 2nd to expand that slot to the machining margin parameter. The 3rd pass is the final finishing pass, in the end I do two .015" finishing passes.

The chatter still exists so I’m probably gonna pick up some steel plate and also swap out the bed for an aluminum extrusion. I don’t have a ton of money to throw around so ~$100 for a full bed swap is a bit tough to swallow (extrusions, screws and nuts and material for new clamps).

Edit: Also wanted to say that having that much control over the finishing passes lets me plug in exact parameters into GWizard. I can specify the final finishing pass to have .0001 deflection (or less) to reduce chatter as much as possible.