Rather you than me; 1050 is absolutely horrid to machine as it's essentially pure aluminium. It behaves like soft fudge, but doesn't taste as good. It moves rather than cuts and leaves large burrs.

I'd buy the cheapest HSS cutters you can find, as you'll be breaking some of them. There's no advantage in using carbide and unless they're highly polished carbide might be more prone to BUE.

Andrew

From the comfort of my Armchair I looked up a dozen Aluminium alloy Datasheets and found only one claiming 'good' machinability in sheet form. It's 6082. 3103, 5251 and 6063 are 'average' or 'acceptable'. All the others highligted machinability as 'poor', including 1050. Not a good choice.

Many metals are optimised for purposes other than being machined. Most aluminium alloys are rated 'excellent' for rolling, extrusion, cold working, soldering and welding. Great for window frames and sheet metal work but not meant to be machined. Expect bother.

My limited experience suggests the bother with Aluminium is mostly down to it's squishiness and low melting point. Tearing, smearing, distortion, and a high risk of swarf welding to the tool. Palliatives; high speed, sharp cutter, plenty of paraffin, and clearing swarf aggressively. Also worth experimenting to find the combination of depth of cut and feed rate that produces best results.

HSS vs Carbide – difficult to say. As neither of them can be spun fast enough for this job on a 2500rpm mill, I'd go for the cheaper option, hoping that HSS might be sharper. Mainly though, I don't think Carbide offers any advantage for milling soft Aluminium, and being brittle might cause expensive breakages. It's the gooey material that suggests HSS – milling fibre-glass in same way, I'd recommend carbide.

Dave

Hi Ron, if you get a 1mm carbide one, don't drop it, don't ask why, but I bought one once, got it out of the container but it didn't make it to the collet.

Regards Nick.

Can't you make a punch and die and crop the holes? Far easier than clearing the cutter teeth.

Regards Ian.

Keeping the sheet flat will be a nightmare while it is machined. In industry, a vacuum plate would be used. I would go for HSS and buy several,making sure that a lubricant like WD40 or AC90 was used at all times.

Superglue to a bit of metal, boil after machining

Better make sure you sit down before looking at a 0.5mm cutter then!

Andrew

The fine detail:

What surprises me is that the flutes seem somewhat longer than quoted.

Andrew