| Suitable tooling for Micro Milling Machine
I'm currently having a play with milling some small parts and am looking for cheaper alternatives to 1mm slot drills...
...last night I decided I'd just check I had the right cutter for the job in hand and was just putting a 1mm carbide slot drill back in it's tube and putting the piece of foam in the end to stop the tip rattling around and breaking...
...little did I know that the other end of the tube wasn't pushed on...it slid out, quite slowly and slow enough for me to notice but too fast to do anything about it...anyhow it landed on the floor with a thump and thinking to myself...did it land on the 1mm tipped end, I then heard a little..."kerplink" sound of the broken slot drill ricochet across the room and bounce off the wall...
After about half an hour of muttering general expletives and assorted four letter words to myself...it dawned on me is there a cheaper alternative?
Can small diameter carbide burrs be used to machine and engrave various plastics such as High Impact Styrene and Acrylic?
The main problem seems to be chip removal and having enough extraction to prevent chips from building up on the tooling and generating heat...I'm imagining a rasp would be pretty hopeless as even the purpose designed slot drills have a tough time. But as I'm cutting out very thin sheet like 0.5mm and 1mm maybe it would work reasonably.
Failing that does anyone know a good supplier of Carbide Slot drills approx 0.5mm - 3mm diameter with a 3.17mm 1/8" shank.
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