CNC Routing Steel/Porcelain?

[jfiscus]

We have been buying precut sizes of a similar material for people requiring magnetic receptive sign faces, but it is expensive and would be great to bring this piece of the process in-house.

Grimco | MAXMETAL™ ELEMENT – Steel

grimco.com

Has anyone tried routing this material above from Grimco? Any particular bits or settings for us to try with a CNC?
Is it as easy to route as regular maxmetal, or is it a different thing entirely with porcelain & steel?

 

[johnnysigns]

It says it's CNC routable so someone must make tooling that plays well with the steel and plastic core. There's lots of ACM tooling, but it'll generally state it's not good for ferrous metals so I'm guessing tooling for thin sheet steel would work just fine?? They don't get into much specifics tooling wise here, but they do have people on staff that can be reached by phone or email: https://www.maxmetal.com/cutting-fabrication.html

 

[letterworks]

Having cut steel before (by accident, customer said it was aluminum laminated to wood), a carbide bit *will* cut it, but it will get shorter every time!

I would guess that way lower feedrate/chipload would be helpful in general but partly what I'm saying is the bit didn't fail spectacularly so maybe just try it. Won't be much metal if it's ACM with steel.

Of course if they say routable then one would think they could tell you some more information, but some mfg opinions on that seem to be the less information they publish the less they can be blamed for when it doesn't work...and I would call maxmetal a brand not a mfg.

 

[johnnysigns]

I've generally always had success calling a product support line. It's in their best interests to explain what tooling they'd recommend. I've called Osrud dozens of times on their help line for different materials we were cutting and how best to dial in feed rates and RPM.

 

[James Burke]

Former 30+ year tool and die maker weighing in here...

Your best bet would be TiN (titanium nitride) coated high speed steel cutters. Carbide tooling is very brittle, and it requires an extremely rigid spindle and securely clamped part. When it comes to cutting metal, most routing tables do not have the precision spindle bearings or the head rigidity (in the ways and in the lead screws) to keep from dulling, chipping or totally destroying the tooling...especially when end-milling (cutting on the bottom of the cutter).

Wood and other non-metallic substrates are a different story when it comes to carbide.


JB