3D carving in Vinyl or PVC

[nick]

Has anybody carved in 3D vinyl or pvc. If so, what is the material of choice and please post pictures.

thanks

[bleeth]

Nick: Quite a while ago someone carved the leaning tower of pisa on PVC pipe with an indexer and lit it from the inside. Looked great. Solid PVC will carve fine as long as you go fast enough to not melt the material or chips so much that it clogs your bit. A venturi cooling jet is a big plus.
I tried doing a bit of v carving on some Thermofoil doors (don't know whether they were PVC or vinyl) and it didn't work.

[davidp]

Nick

For both vinyl and PVC you need sharp tools slow rpm and fast speeds, upcut spiral are best as the clean out the chips. Also the biggest tool you can use is also helpful.

We have been cutting a lot of pvc lately and we invested in some 12 mm triple flute up spirals and we cut at around 12000 rpm at 62 mm per sec (around 2.5 inches). Although one section is 82 mm thick (3.5 inches) so we have to use a straight cutter for that. It does not produce the same quality of cut but it is still very good.

Good Luck