There’s just something oddly satisfying about thread milling. This is a custom mounting flange made from corian for my new controller enclosure that required a 1" NPT.
Estlcam doesn’t have the necessary settings for a tapered thread, just straight threads. It took a couple adjustments. The first run got me about 1.5 turns of thread engagement into the flange. a couple adjustments later and I ended up with full engagement as I wanted.
I’m interested in thread milling as well, but I haven’t been able to determine whether an index-able spindle is necessary or whether simultaneous motion of the 3 axes is sufficient to cut a proper thread (with the right bit of course). Do you have any tips, guides or anything that you used to learn how to do it?
Yea, I’ve watched tons of videos, but most I saw were of people basically just showing off what they’ve done without real explanation as to how. The few that I found that showed some of how to do it either focused on the CAD side of it, or were videos about professional milling machines like HAAS and such where the abilities of the machine are considerably different than the Onefinitiy.
Many videos focused on using lathes to do thread milling and although that seems like a more natural choice of a machine, that is where I came across info of people mentioning using an indexed spindle and that put me on a path of not understanding entirely why that would be needed.
I work in Fusion, and found the aforementioned references helpful.
Here is someone that provides cutting parameters but for a multiform thread mill (also on a similar class CNC - Shapeoko) … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou5j1R4nNf4
This is very similar to the cutter I used. Just a small thread mill cutter. I got this one on Amazon and it wasn’t cheap. Overpriced if I’m being honest, but it was a very good brand.
And this is what it looks like on my Estlcam program. I bypassed the first 2 items: Machine Tap Hole and Machine Chamfer, as I already had these items done in a previous program. All I was interested in was the actual Machine Thread. The ‘Thread Height’ input is a bit confusing, but essentially it’s ‘thread depth’. Once this information is input, Estlcam automatically creates the program for it.
