The past 6 months we have been having tremendous issues with white melamine blunting our router bits.
I don't know off hand what our feed speed and RPM is, but we have not made changes to what it was.
We've gone from getting a very confident 100 sheets of white melamine from each Vortex XP bit (or the similar purple Onsrud bit) down to 20 sheets. I've gotten up to 50 a few times.
We begin seeing a lot of chipout, both on the bottom and the top of the cut.
On every bit, you can clearly see where the melamine surface has seriously etched the cutting edge of the flutes.
I spoke with Vortex yesterday, and they said they are having a lot of calls about this from guys that cut mostly white melamine.
The worst I've had was with Flakeboard brand melamine. Was getting 20 sheets before the bit was trashed.
We switched to Roseburg Duramine, and we improved a touch, now we can usually (but not always) get up to around 50 sheets.
But NOTHING like what we got 6 months ago.
Is anyone else having this issue? What white melamine have you cut that is giving you good success/bit life?
Thanks all!
Matt