Thermwood CNC Routers and Tooling Recommendations for the Plastics Industry

Posted by Duane Marrett on Thu, Jun 09, 2022

Tags: Thermwood, CNC, tooling, Model 43, Model 90, Model 67, Model 70, Model 77, Model 45, Recommendations

Thermwood 3 Axis CNC routers handle plastic sheet processing, billets and panel processing (Model 43 and Model 45). Our 5 Axis CNC routers handle trimming of thermoformed parts, molds and composite machining (Model 67 and Model 90). We also offer the Model 70 and Model 77, which are primarily used for large scale plastic work.

Our machines can work with a wide variety of materials including Starboard, PCV, HDPE, Polyethylene, Polypropylene, PETE, LDPE, PP, PS (Styrofoam), Polycarbonate, Acrylic, Nylon and more.

Some of the basic tooling we use and recommend:

  • For Trimming Operations/Sheet Operations - Single O Flute Up-spiral is used for chip evacuation.
  • For Finishing – 2 or 3 Flute Slow Helix Up-spiral is used.
  • For Composites, we recommend solid PCD or diamond-coated tooling.
  • For Fiberglass Trimming, we recommend using a burr style bit for best results.

For more information, visit www.thermwood.com or give us a call at 1-812-937-4476. Our CNC experts will evaluate your production needs to help determine how you can reduce costs and increase efficiency. We also offer free live demonstrations of our equipment and software using your application and product details. This can help identify inefficiencies and areas of your current process that our machines could help improve.

Thermwood Model 45 Trimming Plastic Sheet (HDPE)

Model 45 Trimming Machining a Plastic Sheet of HDPE