How To Mill Inside Sheet Metal

Once the rollers are in the correct position the mill is ready to roll down the metal.

How to mill inside sheet metal.

The metal slitting saw milling cutter is essentially a very thin plain milling cutter. Help choosing best setup for milling pockets in sheet metal box. But i know many of you have done this successfully. The indexable inserts remove material from the surface of the sheet metal part by fast rotation.

These inserts are made of extremely resistant steels which have far higher hardnesses than the workpieces to be machined. Put on ear defenders and ear protectors switch on and carefully plunge milling slightly into the aluminium. Metal slitting saw milling cutter. The most trouble seems to come from trying to hold the workpiece as rigidly as possible.

These cutters are used for cutoff operations and for milling deep narrow slots and are made in widths from 1 32 to 3 16 inch. You can find your bend allowance with the following formula. I suppose the absence of coolant makes it a whole lot easier to secure but results in a poor finish. π 180 x b x ir k x mt bend allowance ba where b is the angle complementary to your desired bend angle 1 to 180 degrees mt is the thickness of the material ir is the inside radius and k is the k factor.

The milling is carried out by tools that are fitted with indexable inserts. The kinds of pieces i d mill would be 6061 0 063 aluminum about 7 square or smaller. We build an operator control panel for our equipment that requires milling a pocket out of a sheet metal box for a joystick. The most practical hand tool for making more than a few limited cuts is the throatless beverly shear.

The shear is manipulated. This tool is bench mounted and capable of cuts in most sheet metals. Normally sheetmetal is machined on a cnc punch and it s not too practical to mill it due to fixturing issues. The sheet should be supported in one hand whilst the other turns the handle thus drawing the sheet through the rollers.