How to Cut Aluminum with a Router

[Music] when we woodworkers think about routing this tool is almost always used with wood but a router outfitted with the right bit can cut all sorts of things like solid surface plastics and even soft metals and here's a good example recently when I was building this tabletop fire pit project I needed to cut a hole in the middle of an eighth inch thick piece of plate aluminum like this to fit down inside the project the aluminum helps to dissipate heat when the fire pit is lit and the whole inside is sized for this little bread pan with the fuel source so it can fit down inside and hang from its rim now I could have cut this opening with either a jig saw and metal cutting blade or a hacksaw but if you've had much experience with either of those options you know that it's really hard to cut clean straight lines with either of those tools especially on a piece of metal this small I wanted a better solution and the answer for me was to template route it using this simple shop-made jig this plywood top plate as a hole in the center that's the same size as the top of the bread pan and underneath that I've got a layer of eighth inch thick cardboard all around to hold my aluminum plate securely during routing and so I don't have to apply a lot of extra clamps I've got a piece of double-sided tape applied in the middle here and that's so that when I route away this waste piece in the middle of the aluminum it's held securely and these two holes give me a way to pop the plate out when I'm done routing all of it's held together like a sandwich with these top screws I've got a 3/4 inch piece of MDF under the hard board and this big piece of plywood on the bottom gives me a way to clamp the jig to my workbench now here's how I've got the router set up remember I said that the bread pan needs to hang from its rim on the plate and that means that I'm going to need to move my router bit in a little bit so this hole is sly we under sized to fit the pan and to do that I'm using a quarter inch diameter carbide spiral up cut bit inside of a 7/16 outside diameter guide collar in my router that gives me three thirty-seconds of an inch of offset between the outside of the guide collar in the edge of the bit which fits the bread pan under its rim perfectly now there's nothing special about this router bit a carbide spiral up cut bit will work just fine for routing the soft aluminum in fact any router bit with carbide cutting edges will do the trick and I'm going to use a plunge router for this operation so I can make that cut out in several passes of increasing depth just follow the same procedure for routing the aluminum as though you were routing wood I set the first pass to 1/32 inch and routed around the opening clockwise then vacuum off the accumulated metal filings now repeat the process to make additional passes cutting about 1/32 of an inch deeper with each pass that way you won't over stress the router bit and you get a nice clean cut be sure to vacuum out the metal filings after each pass when the router finally cuts all the way through the metal that carpet tape will keep the centerpiece from moving and catching the router bit what I really like about this method it's how cleanly the metal gets milled it's much much smoother and straighter than you'll get with the jigsaw or hacksaw and with a little bit of filing to remove any tiny birds this plate is done and despite what you might fear routing aluminium doesn't seem to dull a router bit I'd milled several of these plates already including the one for the project in my router bit is just as sharp as it was before I started it's ready for routing wood again so the next time you have a project that involves cutting aluminum consider using your router you might be surprised by how easy it is and how well it works I'm Chris Marshall with woodworkers journal magazine thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: WoodworkersJournal

Views: 135,658

Rating: 4.9404888 out of 5

Keywords: how to cut aluminum, cutting aluminum, router cutting aluminum, diy aluminum cutting, routing aluminum, woodoworking tip, woodworking router, how to use a router, aluminum cnc, cnc lesson

Id: -gboj2XhuW0

Length: 4min 29sec (269 seconds)

Published: Tue May 29 2018