Dovetails Ftw

So after last week, I essentially gave up on the 4th axis machining. But when I realized that the problem was the stick-out, together with the fact that the chuck was removable, I realized I could make a replacements part for the chuck that was short and stubby and had a dovetail mount. All good in theory…

So time to mill a dovetail chuck. Got a new 6mm carbide endmill that should supposedly run at 13000rpm and a whooping 1500 mm/min. So that was really scary.

So I learned two things today.

1. Do not let a 6mm endmill slot more than 1mm deep. It get filled with chips in like 3 seconds. Yeah, I am lookign at you, Horizontal. What is it with gloign in and slotting right to the middle of the surface area. Couldn’t you choose a better movement pattern? Use a helix like all other sensible methods.
2. Do not skimp on the alcohol. Cutting down the mister to just a moisturizing mist was clearly not the way to go.

So that lesson almost cost me the end mill 4 times, and unfortunately, it now has quite a few scrapes on it. So that was sad….

But the dovetail endmill seems to have done its thing:

Hopefully I will be able to make something useful out of this after all….