Thanks,,, I just needed a simple speaker grille, but since it cost me nothing extra to cut an intricate pattern, I got cute and added the "R"s (for resotune).Phrazemaster said:Yeah good point that stream is deadly!! Should be approached like high voltage - don't DIY this unless you're aware of the risks!
The speaker grill looks great JR. I had a PSU water jet cut with fabulous results.
gyraf said:Question for those of you that know the technology: Is this a possible way to drill 1mm-holes in 1.2mm brass?
Reason for asking is that stamping is not possible, and CNC is too expensive (drill in brass is slooooow, and there's thousands of holes to do)..
Jakob E.
gyraf said:In PCB'c you can drill really really fast, if you have a sharp drill running at ridiculous-fast rpm. On Gustav's factory I saw them going 140K rpm, and 180m/min feed - they didn't consider that fast (!)
In brass, however, there seems to be no way around going slow and steady, "peck-drilling" to remove cutoffs. Otherwise it'll grab the drill and kill it instantly. Yes, even with special drills for brass..
The chinese must have come up with something to enable them to do microphone capsules at such low prices..? Oh well, maybe they drill by hand..
Jakob E.
Marik said:Jakob,
The waterjets would work the best on thick materials, otherwise way slow and imprecise. Of course, for brass of your thickness and amount of holes the stamping would be by far the fastest. If not possible (and there is no way around) then I'd look at laser cutting. The same rule as for stamping applies (i.e. the size of the hole should be appr. equal the thickness of the material), but 1mm and 1.2mm are close enough. With laser if the holes are close to each other you might run into a problem of too much heat generation. The way around is to skip the hole rows, allowing the material to work as a heat sink and then come back to those rows later.
If you can stack a few plates together then the CNC might work reasonably fast. You will need to spot those, first (the 1mm drill will walk) and then with carbide drill, flood coolant, and high speed spindle in a couple pecks you could drill through some 10-12mm stack with a reasonable speed.
Best, M
metalb00b00 said:Because I own a laser cutting machine the size of a container truck, I can tell you this.
Only a special build type of laser cutting machine can cut through brass, copper or bronze.
Reason is because their surface is reflective.
Marik said:You probably have CO2, which indeed, has problems cutting reflective metals. High power, short focal lens distance and using oxygen as cutting gas (which greatly helps laser beam absorption) do help. Fiber lasers do not have those problems at all because of different laser wavelength. To cut that thickness you will need at least some 400W machine for reasonable speed.
Best, M
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