I finally dialed in a finish pass on a tricky aluminum part today

I was fighting chatter on this 6061 bracket for three days straight and it turned out I just needed to bump the spindle speed up by 500 rpm and slow the feed way down. What's your go-to fix for chatter on thin-walled parts?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse_green551d ago

Three days? Man that is rough. I would have pulled my hair out by day two. Bumping spindle speed by 500 rpm is a huge swing though. Usually I tweak in like 50-100 increments. Did you try any other stuff first like changing tool stickout or adding a damper? Thin walls are the absolute worst. I have a theory that chatter is just the machine crying for help. And you gotta listen. Speed up or slow down, it's always a gamble. For thin wall stuff I usually go with a spring pass too. Just one more light cut without moving the tool. Cleans up the harmonics a bit.

cora8631d ago

Man I feel this so hard. I once spent almost a whole shift trying to get a 0.020 wall aluminum tube to stop screaming at 60 IPM. Dropped feed down to 30, added a spring pass, even swapped to a shorter holder. Ended up just cranking spindle up by 200 rpm and it instantly went quiet. Made me feel like an idiot for not trying that first.