Question How clean cutouts can be made in ABS enclosures with a Stepcraft

Hi,

We are a small business manufacturing electronic devices in small quantities. We use various off-the-shelf ABS enclosures that we have the supplier post process for us doing cutouts. We are thinking of getting a desktop CNC mill for doing the cutouts (and possibly engravings) ourselves. Can the Stepcraft CNC be used to make cutouts that are on par with what are getting from the supplier today, or will they just look amateurish? Does anyone have pictures of cutouts in ABS they might want to share? What spindle/router will give best results for this particular task, is it the HF-500, the industrial VFD spindle from StoneyCNC or any other?

Any input much appreciated.

/Martin Söderström - Sweden

Dear Martin,

what´s the precision you´re aiming for? Cut outs itself are easily to realize and far from looking amateurish. The precision you will reach with a standard Stepcraft without adjustable spindle nuts is in the few hundreds of a millimeter regime. For the quality of cut outs and similar things just scroll through the following thread. It´s in German, but there you can find tons of pictures of things people did with their Steppi using several materials like wood, aluminum, brass, copper, acrylic glass, polycarbonate and a lot of other stuff.

Click me!

Best regards,
Ronald

Thanks for responding, Ronald. I guess the quality of the cutouts is not a problem them. Very inspiring thread you linked to! Makes me want to create lot's of other stuff besides our cutouts once we get hold of a Stepcraft...

/Martin

I make pickguards for guitars often and the stepcraft produces very professional results. My advice would be to use single fluted milling bits and don't cut too slow. I use a HF-500 spindle. If you use bits with more flutes and move too slow, I found that it just melts the plastic and ruins the cut.

Correct setup wlll achieve good results. We have many clients doing this