Cutting acrylic please

1

Can anyone help me with this
I try to cut acrylic but I get lots of blurs
and not smooth edge
I have tried with low speed and low depth per pass,
and slow feed rate
and differnt kind of bits, but nothing getting better
I have an DeWalt and and I set the speed to the lowest

What am I doing wrong here

Kristian

20161217_115059.jpg2475×2916 1.51 MB

2

Single flute upcut bit, low doc, faster feed rate

3

I usually use an 20 degree bit

Feed rate=100
Total Depth of cut .01. Here’s a couple examples

image.jpeg3024×4032 1.14 MB
1
IMG_0748.JPG4032×3024 2.6 MB

5

What´s low doc, ?

6

What is extruded acrylic

8

I probably have Extruded since it´s with plastic covers

9

I just tried the same this week for some Christmas Ornaments with extruded acrylic from Menards. had the same results as yours when the bit would become gummed up with molten acrylic. what helped the best was using forced air from an air compressor to blow the chips away from the cutting area. I also had to use the slowest setting on the Dewalt and a fast feed rate with a shallow depth of cut as everyone states. but without the air blowing away the chips it would always gum up and then that would create heat on the surface where the gummed up ball would rub the top of the acrylic and cause the same mess in your picture. hope this helps.

10

Go fast.

Try a high feed rate (2400mm/min) and shallow cut. For engraving you dont need to go deep.
Keeping the pasltic from melting is the big worry, I have also used plastic clay to make an edge around the design so I could pour water onto the cut surface. Wont work if you ant to cut trough tho.

For cutting trough I have had decent result with a 3flute 3mm upcut helix bit doing 1800mm/min and depth per pas = 1mm. Extruded acrylic.

1 Like
11

Thank´s Haldor

I did a test minuts ago and with your recommendations 2400mm/min
and with 0.2mm deep, and a fairly high speed on my DeWalt it turned out well
I didn´t had a 3 flute bit so I tried with a 2 flute straight bit :ok_hand:

Thank´s again
Kristian

12

I just went through this headache. I got saved with someone’s suggestion to run at 1200mm/min (my router only did 35k rpm) so I was nervous because Easel’s suggest was about 600mm/m. I was surprised with my piece looking almost perfect.

I learned that high rpm = really fast feedrates and double the flutes = double the feedrate.