How to Cut Aluminum With Your CNC Cutting Machine

When you think of CNC working, you usually think of plastic and wood. However, CNC cutting machine can also cut aluminum (a weaker metal) well.

At the same time, you need to pay attention to some things. Not surprisingly, cutting aluminum has its complexity (unlike wood and plastic). The first thing to know is that aluminum is a "sticky" metal and it wants to stick to your cutting tools. As a result, removing the chip will be a little tricky (more on this later).

With this in mind, when using a portable CNC cutting machine to cut aluminum, you should pay attention to the following points (again, thanks to Bob Warfield of CNC Cookbook for providing a lot of information in this article):

Calm down

In any business, your goal is to complete high-quality work as quickly as possible. Therefore, when starting to use portable CNC cutting machine, I hope to reduce the material removal rate. But if the CNC cutting machine runs too fast, fast forwarding will only lead to errors and failures in the work.

You don’t have to slow down the progress and speed. However, the actual removal rate of the material must be reduced.

Use the feed rate calculator

When a CNC cutting machine cuts aluminum, the feed and speed windows are much narrower. Therefore, they need to be accurate when calculating them. If you need help, check out our feed rate calculator.

Pay attention to clean

The main reason for damaging the router bit is the chip re-cutting. You can use a vacuum cleaning system. But remember, you don’t have to rely on it to delete all tiles. Before you start cutting again, check each cut to ensure that the chips are clean.

Check cuts and grooves

As the cutting distance approaches, the chips become more and more difficult to remove. In order to alleviate the difficulties caused by this, please take some other steps.

Spindle with fewer grooves

When cutting aluminum, the portable CNC cutting machine generates large chips. You cannot solve this problem. However, you can use 3 or fewer flutes. This leaves more space between the cutting edges and provides more space to eject larger chips.

The fewer grooves, the better. If you have 4 or more flutes, chips will clog your flutes and the drill bit will break.

And don’t forget to lubricate with mist

Since aluminum likes the spindle of a portable CNC cutting machine, this effect can be reduced by using lubricating mist.

Now you can cut aluminum.

With these tips in mind, you can now cut aluminum and reduce a lot of frustration. The next time you use a CNC cutting machine to cut aluminum, you should check it, learn from your mistakes, and improve your ability to cut aluminum.