how would you produce/cut these tiny parts ?

[rumpelstielz]

i have this little metal part (brass or aluminium) i want to make, it's the holder for a keyring and it's tiny 😛 about 6 x 6 x 8 mm. the thingy will be slotted into a small wood item like this:

i need the red parts to be precise and have sharp edges, the hole needs to be drilled with the cnc cause drilling maually after milling the parts will be impossible on such small scale ... the filets and rounded back are not so critical and i can sand the bevels.

i want to make a whole bunch of them and i've been pondering how to produce this most effectively.

To get the sharp edges i need for a tight fit i'll need to mill this from 2 sides and drill from a third i think and with tiny parts like this i always struggle to find a workholding strategy that works.

Wondering about the stock size i should use, which tools and operations and how i could use/arrange patterns effectively to duplicate parts and save machining time and have the best possible part stability during cut until the end.

 

so while i play with this i was wondering if anyone has some tips on how to approach tiny 3d parts like this, i attached the file if anyone wants to play around with it ...

PS: it doesn't need to be exactly like this proto this is just my ideal scenario, i'm willing to compromise a bit with the geometry to make it easier to cut, so for example i could make the part with the hole flat and taper and filet the ringhole manually with file and sandpaper.

any ideas ?

[LibertyMachine]

What material and what do you have for machine, workholding, axis selection, spindle speed

[rumpelstielz]

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@LibertyMachine wrote:

What material and what do you have for machine, workholding, axis selection, spindle speed

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brass or aluminium, have a 3 axis mill, workholding with vise, vac table, clamps, double sided tape, screws, toothpicks .. whatever works, probably a custom jig which i usually end up making for stuff like this i mill from several sides .. spindle goes up to 10k or so, the machine is not ideal for metal cutting cause i don't have precise spindle rpm control and not much torque on low spindle speeds. it's not an ideal machine for this but i'm not so worried about the cutting opèeration settings and technicalites of cutting metal for the moment, i've cut similar but less complicated parts like this before in metal and brass so that should work, what i'm wondering is how best to lay out the parts, what size and shape stock to use from which side to cut first and things like that

btw. i'm not a trained cnc technician and my machine is by no means a modern machine 🙂