Cutting Lexan

[edp@sunbeach.net]

Need to cut some marine hatch/skylight inserts in
1/2" and 3/8" thick UV stable Lexan - Plan to use an Amana 3/8" dia. spiral upcut - would like some input on feed speeds and depth of cut per pass.....

[rgbrown@itexas.net]

Where would you like the flowers sent? And to the funeral home or the hospital?

There are a lot of questions to be answered but I would highly recommend a down-spiral bit and good vaccum hold-down. The cut should be completly through the material and the material should be on an "Island" where the "waste" can fall away.

Ron

And, you could get 'lucky'and not have a problem at all with the 'upcut bit' and holding down the waste - but it won't happen in my shop.

[elcruisr]

Actually it's not so bad. We just did some 1.25" stock. We used an o-flute hard plastic "finisher" in 1/2" diameter. It's a "slow" spiral, upcut, 3 flute tool. We bought ours from Onsrud Cutter there are other brands as well. For your stock I'd use a 3/8" tool. An O-flute plastic spiral will leave a smoother finish and cut better but still plan on a little sanding touch up on the edges. We held our stock on the vacuum table and added some cover boards around the vacuum zone and tight to the stock to help hold it in place. The pieces were 14 x 6 and we cut two 4" holes, a .25" x .5" dado and a large notch in them. If I remember correctly the manf. reccommended a feed speed of 1 -1.5 IPS at 8,000 to 9,000 rpm and multipass the job. We took it at 3/8" per pass.

Eric Lamoray