CNC Routing / Cutting

Gaatech CNC routing of 3K carbon fiber Fr4 G10 and Tough Laminates

3K Carbon – FR4 – G10 – GPO3 and other laminate materials CNC Routed.

Our in house CNC routing service can quickly and accurately cut your designs

Carbon Fibre Cutting Service UK – World Wide Shipping

Design Files

All we require is a copy of your design file.

We like to work with DXF (2014) formats.

You should also send a PDF that we can use as a reference.

Please make sure that your design is fully dimensioned, all lines are joined at both ends and that you have no double lines, where you may have drawn a line or circle over itself. If you are able to place text and dimensions of their own layer its very helpful.

NDA Non-Disclosure Agreement

Most of what we work on are proto-types so we are more that happy to sign a NDA.

This Video May Help You.

Things to Consider When CNC Routing

Diameters

Depending upon your design, if you can have your smallest diameter at 3.0 mm we will achieve a good cost effective part for you. We are able to go down to a 1.5 mm diameter though these cutters are more expensive, and have a shallower depth of cut. These smaller cutters also increase the cutting time massively, and the benefits of having a slightly smaller radius in a generally design are not normally cost effective.

Routed Holes

When we are able to use a standard 3mm burr bit to route the holes, we can achieve good cutting speed and feeds. We are able to use 1.5 mm burr bit where necessary though the feed rates are slower. These burr bits give a nice smooth cut.

Drilling Holes

Where holes have to be within a very fine tolerance, for friction fit insersion say 0.05 mm they are drilled. Commonly we find one drill bit can be used for around 30-50 holes depending upon the depth drilled before tolerance is lost. Drilling holes is time consuming and the cost of the drill bits are much higher than a standard burr bit.

Tolerance

When supplying your drawing//project you should indicate the tolerance required. You must bare in mind that a router is not an extremely heavy milling machine where the tolerance can be +/- ZERO.

A CNC routers bed size is massive when compered to the bed of a high procession milling machine and it construction though stiff and strong is much lighter, than a mill.

The tolerance across the bed of a router you would expect to see +/- 0.20mm at worst but normally much better over a distance of 1000mm or better. Where 0.20mm is just slightly bigger than two sheets of average photo copy/ink jet paper. For most projects having a tolerance like this is more than acceptable.

Nesting And Part Hold Down

If you design has many small parts normally smaller than 150 x 150 mm (as shown below) then the vacuum table will not hold these part once cut. In order to overcome this we either:-

Use any small holes within your design to screw the parts down to the table.
Introduce small tabs will be introduce into you design so that during routing the actual small part will not “break-out” from the original material. This ensures that the part will have good clean cut edges. So the small part will look like parts from an “AirFix” modal.
Use of a variety of tapes to stick the parts down.
A combination of all three above.

Nesting Parts To Save Money & Material

The nesting parts to saves money and material. Please do not “nest” (make multiple copies of the same part, as the image below) of your parts, we will do this process for you, once we have checked your design.

Shown in the image below are only 4 separate parts, 3 different sizes of legs and 1 spacer.

The Client informs us how many copies of each part is required, the software generates the number of copies required and positions them to make the best use of the material.

We are able to cut 940 x 880mm designs.

Costs – How We Price Our CNC Routing Jobs

From your design files we will be able to calculate a cost. Items that will influence the costs are:

The is the accuracy of the drawing and if any work is required to it. This is an area where you can avoid unnecessary cost, by provided good drawings in DWG, DXF, PDF files can be used but sometimes these do not transfer in the CNC software very well.
The size of cutter(s) required. (normally 3mm)
The type of material required, Carbon or FR4.
The thickness of material.
The linear length of the total cut (the time it will take to cut your design).
The number of drill holes smaller than 3mm.
The number of tool changes required if any. (This can be avoided it the smallest holes is 3mm and the smallest radius is 1.5mm.
The weight of the finished parts (postage cost).

Tags:-cnc routing, cnc machine, cnc maching, cutting fr4 g10, cutting 3k carbon fiber, cutting carbon fiber, carbon fibre

Dust

Once your parts have been CNC routed, they are inspected, and washed to try and remove the dust generated during the cutting process. We do not guarantee 100% dust removal.

Edges

The CNC routed parts have very square edges. When cutting laminates though these edges are not “razor sharp” they are square and can feel slightly sharp to the touch.

Care must be taken when handling these parts