What alloy of aluminum for CNC machining?

I'm going to be doing some CNC machining to make some car parts(Gasp, Billet!). It'll be used for a cylinder head, not just decorative stuff. Of the hundreds of alloys avalible, which one would be the best to use? Which is the most readily avalible? Thanks for the info.

 

Bugman,
What CNC Mill do you have at your disposal (hopefully a 5 axis)? I am a amateur machinist and have worked with a few different materials in my daily grind. Are you going to machine your own heads? The block of Aluminium to make heads is going to be rough on the gator skin if your budget is anything like mine.
PL&R
Dale aka "NOC"

 

I dont have a mill at this point. My plan is to do the CAD/CAM work and farm out the actual machining. I know the block of AL is going to be spendy, but CNC machining is the easiest way for me to get my prototype made.

 

Cool....what are you prototyping? I have the pleasure of being good friends with a guy that owns a machine shop and does alot of work for the Gov. I just work for the lowly Gov. contractor with a Rapid Prototyping shop. What are you programing in....Surf-cam or Gibbs...etc.

 

7075-T6 is plentiful and will work for cylinder heads.

 

I don't know of any machinists that will run a CNC program that wasn't made by them, or someone they work for. Code is machine specific, and things can go very wrong with bad code. So I would ask around before spending too much time with your CAM package. The places I know of would like a model... .iges, .prt, .dxf, whatever is compatable with their CAM package, and a good drawing with dimensions, tolerances, required finish, etc. And to answer your question... 7075-T6

What program are you using?

 

Thanks for the info. Looks like 7075 is my material of choice.

The initial drawings are being done with Inventor 11, as it's the program my artist, HAMBer Hawkeye, has access too. I always ***umed that i would hand over the drawing/model files to teh machine shop and they would write the tool paths for it.

 

7075 is a good choice as would be 6160. Flexicoker has a point with the programing. Most CNC's use the same G code but, depending on their set-up they may use surf cam or Gibbs or the other 50 progs out there. Auto-Cad would be usefull to draw it in as most of these progs will be able to convert from cad to their file ext.
Good luck

 

I prefer 6061 T6 check ebay for good prices on smaller pieces, I Use MASTERCAM #1 cam software in the world for 2d and 3d
Bob