# Any tips on machining Graphite?



## DaveRC (Jan 11, 2012)

Hi,

I am just about to make the piston and valve for a flame eater and I am sat here looking at a lump of graphite thinking I have no idea how easy or hard this is going to be.

I need to obviously make it a good fit in the bore and also need to tap a thread through the centre of both.

So, before I go and make a right pigs ear of the whole thing, ant tips..?

Thanks

Dave


----------



## lordedmond (Jan 11, 2012)

no.1 cover up every thing in sight
no.2 arrange a vac next to the tool ( or let the dust pile up and save for lubricating the flame eater )
no.3 wear a dust mask, and put on a good barrier cream ( its worst than CI by a factor of 1000 )

No. 4 take your time its very soft and use brown paper instead of any abrasive paper no matter how fine

it will look like a corn cob but it is in-fact very smooth


Stuart


----------



## Orrin (Jan 13, 2012)

Besides the good advice already given, allow me to add:

1) You can get by with high cutting speed.

2) For roughing cuts, use a very aggressive depth of cut and feed. This produces granular swarf that is not so prone to producing airborne dust.

3) Use shallow cutting depth and fine rates of feed for finish cuts. This produces lots of fine dust, so keep the vacuum nozzle next to the cutting tool. 

4) Use very sharp HSS tooling. It is apt to dull quickly, so stone a fresh keen edge for the finishing cuts. 

5) Follow the advice already given.

Orrin


----------



## IronHorse (Jan 13, 2012)

I was lucky as it was summer and I have a mini-lathe, I took it outside in the backyard, saved a lot of mess indoors. I am not sure that a regular shop-vac filter will catch all the fine particles, better to use one of the ones designed for drywall dust.



IronHorse


----------

