I’ve had my Journeyman for a couple of years and looking forward to some upgrades I just bought. These include an Elite upgrade and a Redline 120 V 1.5 KW. I have a couple of Christmas gifts I’m working on, in walnut. The walnut is from some rough cut slabs (very rough). In the past, I burned up a Makita using a Whiteside 6210 and too aggressive DOC @ 100 ipm. I’m looking forward to a lot of things out of the upgrades, but I’m curious if I’ll be able to chuck up my 1/2” surfacing bit and what some realistic expectations are for DOC and speed? Any experiences with Elite and PWN or similar with slab flattening?
I always flatten slabs manually. I have a 2.2kw spindle and use a CMT flattening bit that’s 2 3/8" in diameter at 8000 rpm I have taken off close to an 1/8" in one pass but usually try to stay around 1/16". Usually rough cut wood is so uneven that the first pass or two just takes off the high spots while not even touching the low spots.
As for ipm, it’s not the spindle power that slows things down. I find that it’s the direction of the grain vs which way the 1F is travelling. If I try to take too much off in one pass it’ll start to chatter. Doing it manually means I can just slow down when needed and speed up when I can.
Once the wood has been flattened and I want to dimension it I could do it gcode. Since I’m already set up to do it manually I just finish that way. I do zero the Z axis to the spoilboard so I know how thick the wood is.
The 1.5 KW spindle in kind of weak, especially with hardwood, that being said it does get the job done.
I set the DOC to 0.25mm with a 25.4mm (1 inch) flattening bit with a speed of around 4000 mm/min.
I use this bit, with exchangeable cutters. I believe max RPM is about 10000.
You can also use a smaller bit and run much higher speeds and depth, but I think surface quality is better with the bigger bit.
With your 1/2 inch bit I would start with DOC of 0.3 mm and a speed of 6000 mm/min and go up from there. Please look up the max RPM for your bit, i would not necessarily run it at 24000 RPM especially with an ER11 collet and a 1/4 inch shaft.
I have the Masso and use the face cut in the conversational tab to create the file and toolpath right on the controller after a quick measure.
Once you have a little bit of practice It takes literally a 1 minute or 2 to fill in all the data, create the toolpath in the controller and press cycle start.
I flattened like 6 slabs on a Saturday, just occasionally returning to clamp down the next slab, input the measurements create and load the new toolpath
It is quite enjoyable to be able to just walk away and let the 1F do its thing.