Surfacing spoilboard on new machine

1

I have a 2.5" surfacing bit that was delivered by mistake and the vendor said, keep it. It’s probably a bit big for the 4hp spindle, but would it be okay for MDF?

I’m concerned about the touch off plate with this bit since it’s above the board. Is it normal to remove it for surfacing the spoilboard?

2

I don’t know what kind of bit it is, but I have a 2.5" slab slayer bit and I can run 100ipm and 0.100" depth of cut on the hardest mesquite with my 4hp spindle. Just keep the rpm up to the high end of what the manufacturer specifies so you have the most HP you can get out of the spindle.

3

Thanks!
I figured I could use it, and it ended up being free, so it’s even better!

Looking at the toolpath in Fusion, it appears the lead in is right over the touch plate. I’m not sure if I can change that, but I’d rather pull the touchplate and reset it than destroy it.

4

I have a 2.5" surfacing bit and the older 3 HP spindle. For light surfacing passes the issue is more having the feeds and speeds right so don’t burn the surface of the MDF.

5

Never a bad idea to be safe about keeping your cutting area as clear as possible ( with respect to taking your touch plate off before surfacing) but you can configure where your lead-in lead-out positions are in the linking tab of the tool path.

6

Thank you very much!
If I change the direction so it’s doing the Y axis first, then the lead in is fine, but it looks like the toolpath puts the centerpoint of the bit right at the edge, so the bit will protrude 1.25" and that will do some damage!

I’ll pull the tool height setter. It can’t hurt and I’ll have to reset everything after the spoilboard gets done anyway.

So much to learn! Every time I learn something new on this machine, I find there are even more things I don’t know. Milling the spoilboard mounting holes, I put a sheet of melamine under it that was my old spoilboard. It cut fully through the MDF but didn’t scratch the melamine everywhere but the right side were it left less than onion skin thickness (I hadn’t done anything but square the gantry at that point). It was already more accurate that I could make my Yeti in 3 years!