Discovered a trick for stopping tool chatter on thin aluminum parts

I was getting terrible chatter milling some 1/8 inch aluminum brackets until I stuck a strip of double-sided tape under the part before clamping. The vibration dampened just enough to get a clean finish on the last 15 parts. Anyone else use tape this way or found something better?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura_schmidt8221d ago

Might try a layer of thick rubber sheet under the aluminum next time... absorbs the vibration even better than tape on some setups.

laura_schmidt8221d ago

Right, because apparently my current setup sounds like a cat trying to escape a bag. Adding rubber to the mix might just turn my project into a marshmallow, but I'm game for anything that doesn't involve me chasing parts across the room again. Last time I tried tape, it looked like a toddler went crazy with a roll of duct tape and the result was... not great. At least with rubber, I can pretend I'm building some kind of high-end soundproofing instead of a janky prototype. Might even make it smell like a new tire, which is better than the burnt electronics scent I'm used to.

kelly38521d ago

Oh man, the toddler with duct tape thing hit home (lol, literally, because I had to peel some off my table last week). I tried rubber sheet once on a speaker box I was messing with, and yeah, it did turn the whole thing into a bit of a marshmallow - killed that nasty rattle though, and it smelled like a tire shop for a week. Actually found that a layer of that stick-on weatherstripping foam (the squishy black kind, not the hard stuff) works pretty good too, and it's cheap enough that you don't feel bad if you mess up cutting it.