Rock Band Pedal
 

A little project for fun. The kick pedal on my Rock Band video game broke so I decided to try to make a new one from aluminum.

I've never tried milling aluminum before so I thought it would be fun.

It probably would have been more cost efficient to buy diamondplate but I decided to make my own.

Here is the result.

John

Attachment 8140

Attachment 8141

John, that looks First Rate. Any details on how you did the cut file and machining?

Well done. It looks great.

nice work!

details on the parameters?

btw, you don't use that barefoot eh?
those diamonds look rather sharp & pointy

John,

That looks great. You could have engraved the bands name into the pedal...........Rock On....

What a beauty! Love it!

Thats a great looking job.

Thanks, I used a 1/8" double flute upcut wood routing bit at .03125 per pass. The router was turned down as slow as it will go and the feedrate was set at 20 IPM.
I think those settings are fairly conservative, but I didn't want to break a bit.

The pedal will grip your socks quite well. :)

John

John,

There has been promoted that the router speed should be slower to cut metal. I think you will find that you want a faster router speed when you are cutting metal. I am not an expert but the faster router speed helps remove the metal chips and helps keep the bit cooler.

Nils, I'm not an expert either, but my understanding is that the goal is feed rate high and spindle speed low. As we both know from working in wood, if you hold a work piece in one place (or even slow down) relative to a cutter (saw, router, ...), it burns. Heat is generated from the friction of hanging around a location that has already been cut.

So, in both wood and metal cutting, the ideal is to feed as fast as possible relative to the geometry of the tool, and the rotational speed. There are practical limits, of course; your machine can only feed so fast, and only has so much stiffness and cutting torque, so you set your speed down to compensate for those limits. And you don't want to shear off your bits.

In metal, "ideal" chips are long, stringy, spiral pieces, demonstrating that the cut is being made continuously, not short sharp pieces, showing that the cut is actually stopping and starting, waiting for the feed to catch up with the speed. That latter case is often a cause of chatter.

Actually, the faster the spindle speed, the hotter the bit.

Machining Aluminium
 

Here's a little tip I learned long ago. Use some methylated spirits as your collant when machining Aluminum. It evaporates quickly and prevents warping.

As far as speed goes. The harder it is the slower you go. Except for plastic where slow stops it melting and clogging up your bits.

Once tried to cut Oilon with my steel cutting Evolution 230mm saw. Normally it cuts 6mm plate like it's been milled and then is still cold. That oilon got stuck in everywhere.