Selecting the right coolant for the job may seem straight forward, but there had to be a reason there are so many options, so I started digging around. Here’s what I learned:

Two years ago, we covered how Frankie Flood uses his PCNC 1100 to make various industrial arts projects and even hot-rod pizza cutters for celebrity chefs. Flood is a professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where he runs the university’s Digital Craft Research Lab (DCRL). “I also teach courses in a newly formed program at the university, called Digital Fabrication and Design,” Flood explains. Because the Digital Fabrication program is an applied program in design, it’s offered to Art students as a BA in Art, but also to Engineering students as a certificate program.

Chip removal is essential for proper cutting. When chips aren’t cleared properly they can weld onto the tool, cause discrepancies in the cutting precision, and even cause premature wear on your mill.

Late last month, I posted about the soapstone carving that Jeff Rasnake does with his Tormach PCNC 1100.  Mostly, I wanted to show off some of his creative fixturing methods for big heavy things (like the picture above). It turned out that lots of blog readers were interested in the actually details of soapstone machining - feeds, speeds, tool selection, etc.  I reached out to Jeff again and he was kind enough respond.

Frankie Flood is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus and teaches in the Jewelry and Metalsmithing area within the Peck School of the Arts. A classically-trained jewelry artist, Flood’s interest in CNC began in the machine shop while attending the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.