machining carbon

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machining carbon

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FLD	FLD posted 11 Years Ago HOT Topic Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 468, Visits: 2.7K	Is it possible to machine carbon laminates in a similar fashion to metals, ie turn on a lathe? I am considering some mouldings that need some serious accuracy with wierd shapes and I was thinking this might be another option.
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ajb100	ajb100 posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 346, Visits: 4.4K	I havnt tried turning any composites yet, but what I have done is CNC mill shapes using a long permagrit cutter designed for air rotaries instead of a traditional cutter. There are traditional looking tools available to cut carbon, but the price is rather high. The only issue with the permagrit idea is due to the way they are made, they are not perfectly round, so had to do a test hole with each cutter to measure the diameter hole they cut so I knew what to program into the machine. The only other issue was the dust. The machines are used to swarf not dust so I taped my extracter hose to the body of the mill and ran it down to the surface of the carbon parallel to the quill. It worked pretty well tbh. I considered making a shroud to cover the tool and duct the extracter more efficiently but it was a lot of work to allow it to move with the vertical motions of the quill shaft. There's no reason you couldn't fit a permagrit tool to a lathe IMO
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kidpaint	kidpaint posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 99, Visits: 676	I was just actually getting on here to look for this same question. I was thinking about milling some future projects. Ill have to try the permagrit and see how that works out.
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f1rob	f1rob posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 237, Visits: 4.8K	No problems machining it but you will find lots of machine shops are against it Some on the grounds of dust extraction others don't like carbon dust on the beds of the machines and in the workings
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FLD	FLD posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 468, Visits: 2.7K	Thanks rob.
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