Suggestions to push the boundaries of Wax.

Hello everyone! My name is Wes, and I am fairly new to this forum. I work for a company that makes machinable wax. I have primarily been working on the production side of things, so I have little experience with some of the intricacies that some of our customers deal with when it comes to the different ways they use our wax. I would like to fill this gap with some hands on experience to better understand how the different attributes of the wax we make work in different scenarios. I would eventually like to do some small scale casting, but for now since we own our own CNC, I have decided to start with that. The parking lot foundry is put on hold!

A few months ago, I ran an old pre-written program on some different blends to see how they perform. This was the same program, and same .005" Tapered Ball end cutter for each block. Except for the green one which the cutter head broke on. I attached some pictures to show what I have so far.

Next week, I would like to do some of my own drawings. From my limited understanding, the type of wax chosen is largely dependent on the cuter size. I am looking for suggestions on other parameters to run, and test. Are there certain shapes, or arcs that can be tricky? What are some of the worst case scenarios? I am working with a Pro-Light 1000 if that helps in the suggestions.

You'd only use a cutter that small for finish cuts, and even then you'd want to use a high-speed spindle. With wax, you really shouldn't be breaking cutters; that's why people use it. Try a regular flat 2-flute endmill about 1/8" in diameter for cuts like this.

You should be able to use any kind of machinable wax with any size of cutter, as long as you don't overload it. Any wax, even the hardest, will be a lot softer than metal, which is what the endmills are designed to cut. But if you're pushing it through the material faster than it's removing the material from its path, something's got to give. Pay attention to the recommended chipload per flute, and work out feeds and speeds that respect that, although wax is more forgiving than most things.

Hello, Awerby. Thank you for the reply. I will mess around with cutter sizes, and feed rates. But, on the day we ran the blocks pictured, we selected the .005" solely to see what the jewelers, and dentists experience when they cut with our wax. I am a rookie with CNC, so I will pay closer attention to the bit recommendations in the future. I just looked up the bit we used to see if they listed a chip load per flute as you stated. I didn't see that wording, but I did notice they say on the site:

Quote:

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"These tools can cut very fine detail in wax, but it is very important to slow your travel speed to a minimum of 300 mm per minute and keep the plunge depth to 1mm (.040) or less."

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I don't recall what feed rate we used, and don't have the computer here. Oddly enough, the one that broke the cutter, was the very last one cut.

I wasn't able to run any actual programs, but I was able to do a few manual runs. Just some random depths, using random bits.

I used 3 cutter heads. I ran these at what I thought were cautious feed rates. I used 1 1/16" 4 flute, 2.25mm 2 flute, and a 1/4" 4 flute. On the blue I used our very last .005" cutter for a single super cautious pass keeping the feed rate of 50mm/min @2300 rpm. Only to break it when I dropped it from the quick change head. /Shakefist. :(

For the 1/6" cutter I ran:

1.5mm deep cut. 2000 rpm. 1000mm/min FR.

3mm deep cut. 2000 rpm. 500 FR.

For the 2.25mm cutter I ran:

3mm deep cut. 2000 rpm. 1000 FR.

6mm deep cut. 2000 rpm. 500 FR.

For the 1/4" cutter I ran:

3mm deep cut. 1500 rpm. 1000 FR.

6mm deep cut. 1500 rpm. 500 FR.

9mm deep cut. 1500 rpm. 250 FR.

12mm deep cut. 1500 rpm. 250 FR.

p.s. I apologize if my terminology is a little off. Go easy on the rookie. :cheers:

Here is a couple programs I was able to run. These were .dxf files from the "share your files" thread.
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