In my experience and corroborating stories, shaping is not necessarily a precision endeavor. You may be able to hold a few thousandths, but don’t be too surprised to find that you may get some deviations.
On a bunch of aluminum shaping I was doing, I was flattening some reclaimed stock. The plates were relatively flat and had a nice finish, but after knocking.050” off each side, I was interested to find that the thickness varied about .004”
I usually cut from right to left (purely by habit, no legitimate reason).
After taking the cuts and measuring the plate, I found that right edge of the plate would be slightly thinner than the left edge. The variation could be attributed to hard spots in the cast aluminum, or machine wear, a combination of both, or other unknown factors .
Shimming of the work is often used to compensate for the shortcomings and produce relatively precise results.
Hot rolled steel doesn’t work well on smaller machines.
If you get to play with some 12L14 1214, or 1215- you’ll have the best time as far as steel goes.
Your machine is capable of handling other materials, but DOC, step over, and tool design are of importance.
Rounded tools are great for making nice finishes, shear tools make great finishes.
Cutting fluid really changes the finish in a positive way too
