Its a 1/8" single flute up cut end mill and is noted as being designed for soft plastics. I really don't know if a vinyl record is considered hard or soft but I figured I would give it a try.
My first carve consisted of 3 separate musical note images. I decided I would do my next test with only one of those items which would allow me to reuse the same record.
Instead of running at 200 I decided to dial back to 100 imp. The first carve also had a DOC of .015 which resulted in many passes. I got aggressive and decided to try the carve in one pass so I set my DOC to the material thickness and generated the gcode.
Since I was reusing the same record, I placed it so that that one musical note item would carve in an available spot on the record. This time I made a greater effort of securing the material - I covered both the waste board and the back of the record with blue painters table and then used super glue to to adhere them together.
This run turned out MUCH better. It cut through the material in the single pass without issue and left nice clean cut lines (my previous run of 200 imp caused rough gagged lines and non-circular curves). There were a few spots where the shavings were stuck to the record but those came off with a slight brush of my finger (being v-e-r-y careful not to cut myself on the sharp edge).
This test carve was a success. The slower 100 imp did not cause any melting and nothing was blobbed on the bit and I got smooth cuts. Out of curiosity I did the same run except at 75 imp and got matching results.
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