Anyone cut soapstone with a CNC.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

I have a project that is crying to be made from soap stone. Just looking for some input. What kinds of bits and speeds.

[Jim Underwood]

I've not cut any stone, but I know that lots of folks use a CNC with diamond tooling (and lots of water) to cut granite.

[Brian Breshears]

http://www.phillysoapstone.com/diy.htm

Talks about routing an edge on soapstone with carbide bits. I'd experiment with a hand held or router table mounted router first and see what the results look like.

[Kevin Groenke]

Soapstone machines pretty well with conventional carbide tooling (it's talc!). I've fabricated a couple kitchen counters with it using conventional hand tools and tooling - diamond circular saw blade and hole saws, carbide spirals and roundover bits. You basically treat it like solid surface : multiple passes, slowish feed rate, it's tough on cutters but that's to be expected.

CNC really depends on what your doing with it, but I would think feed rates suggested for aluminum would be appropriate. We recently engraved a map of Detroit into a sheet of slate using cheap chinese carbide PCB engraving bits, used a vortex chilled which really extended the tool life, feed rates were pretty slow (200 IPM?) but then slate is a lot harder than soapstone.

slate map.jpg

[Dan Hintz]

Kevin,

How did you like the vortex cooler? I thought about getting one a year or two back, but the air requirements couldn't be handled by my compressor at the time.

[Jim Underwood]

Stock answer from wood turners when someone asks how to turn Alabaster and Soapstone - "On your friend's lathe".

It's dusty and very abrasive. It'll wipe out bearings if you're not careful... Of course I'm sure you knew that.

[Rob Wright]

I've cut 3d reliefs in it with a solid carbide 4-flute. it's a mess, but cuts. Fast, shallow cuts (0.01) at 240ipm is what worked best for me.

soap1.jpg

[Jim Underwood]

What diameter was your bit? In fact what bit did you use? Do you have a part number?

[Rob Wright]

Jim - just a 4-flute 1/4" solid carbide stub length ball nose endmill cheap as i could find bit off of ebay. I am pretty sure this is the seller "thecrownattitiude" like item #

160711592545