# My First Home Chips



## Magneto&TitaniumMan (Jun 2, 2020)

So I've made a post a while back about how I got my Mini Mill. I took it all apart completely and cleaned a lot of metal debris and gunk out of places, adjusted the gibs and put it all back together. It runs much smoother now. 

Due to Covid-19 I was waiting a long while to receive my vise. Well yesterday I finally did! Here are the videos of my first chips. 

Note. I did some machining in College about 6-7 years ago so this piece you see was an aluminum project we worked on with a CNC. I am still trying to source some cheap metal from a local machine shop, but for now this was all I had to practice on. 

Links are embedded here. First Chips. Second Try, Ball End Mill.

The first video there was what I think is bad chattering while taking a .035" cut with a HSS 1/2" 4 flute end mill. So I changed the bit, since this one was a little long. Used a HSS 5/8" two flute endmill. Seemed to be better but still unsure if the noise is not right. The third I tried using a ball end mill for fun, did 4 passes increasing the depth by .010" each time. 

Previously I tried a roughing cutter and stopped early since I heard too loud of a noise and was unsure if it was normal. As you can tell I am taking this slower than most probably would. 

I posted this in Project of the Day since it's what I did yesterday, but I welcome any advice you may have.


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## graham-xrf (Jun 2, 2020)

So congratulations! 
I am pretty sure HM members will be able to tell you all about cutters and feed rates and obscure causes of chatter, and best of all - what to do to fix it.


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## John O (Jun 2, 2020)

For retail metal purchase, I use https://www.maintenancemetals.com/ they have a good selection of cut offs that sell by the pound.
If you want 20' lengths then North york iron. They will torch cut the lengths


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