I Love Robots

I mentioned that I was moving from acetal inserts in the ScopeRollers to aluminum; stronger; prettier; cheaper.  But I found a foot of the 1.75" acetal.  So I cut it up and am now running it through the mill.  I wrote a program that edge mills workpieces by a specified width, and it is doing a bangup job.  Once I figured out safe feed rates and depths, I just put in the workpiece and it trims to a size that just barely slides into the aluminum tube.

I also had a scrap of that 1.75" acetal that was too short to hold in place on the chop saw, but long enough from which to get an insert, so I used a finishing 1/2" end mill to slice off the excess, then edge milled to the correct length.  I hate throwing away money!  The end mill produced a very decent finish on the acetal's edge and cut at 25 ipm without difficulty.  Because the cutting length was only about 1", it took two passes.  I see some real advantages to longer end mills on soft materials.  I have one 3" long finishing mill.  If only someone would spam me about a drug that lengthens my end mills!