Gentlemen
I'm starting to get a bit confused now. I cant see my cnc cutting a 6mm sheet of marine Alloy 5086 with a 6mm cutter in pass, I can only see a lot of stress on the machine, a huge tool load, and a good possibility of loosing steps. and or damage to the cutter, spindle or even the CNC mechanics. My very good friend with his Huge Bridgeport CNC mill will only take passes to 1/2 the dia of the cutter, and he does this for a living.
Gerry even you wrote about the other thread the guy who cuts 1/8 sheet in nearly 1mm passes, and Yes I can see the advantage of offsetting each pass, but It just sounds like a lot of material to be removed in one pass.
I don't really know, or maybe I'm just a bit of a SOOK when it comes to my machinery but I don't like when I here them struggling, and when it happens you can hear them, I'm sure no good can come from it.
I know my Machine and with a 3/8" cutter at 120"/min with 5mm passes its very happy in melamine and most timbers, I once had the problem were my final finishing pass ended up before my cutting passes and it cut 3/4" MDF in one pass, the result was not pretty, it did not loose steps but hold downs failed due to the tool load and 2 ton of cnc bolted to a concrete slab started to shake and vibrated, pretty scary stuff.
The day when the cutter pulled out and it was cutting 10mm thick plate with a 6mm cutter in one pass, was definitely bad enough, now that's only 1.7 times cutter dia. I cant see this as being a good thing.
Katoh