Ignoring problems doesn't work

Post date: Mar 10, 2017 5:17:13 AM

I ran out of buckets, but that didn't stop the aluminum...

That bag is surprisingly light- the packing density of aluminum chips is evidently pretty low.

...which was accumulating because I screwed up the base to my laptop. Clamp things down, they bow up a little in the middle. End mills usually cut up, so it caught a little of the metal, pulled it up MORE, then eventually tore out a chunk. And it made parts of the base too thin even prior to that- should have seen the issue and stopped it sooner.

Making a new one; this one went a little faster, since I bumped up the feed and stepover, and increased the acceleration on my mill (it was previously WAY too conservative). I should be able to improve cycle times even more by upping the max feed on the Z axis- that was ALSO WAY too conservative. CAM ends up doing a lot of retracts, so that becomes significant.

And he base mostly complete, sans being cut out and chamfered on the back side. You can see a hinge stuck in there, just to see if it fit (it does. And it seems to mostly line up with where it should be on the lid).