# Aluminum Paintball Trigger Plate(s) - Cut and Anodized **URL:** https://community.inventables.com/t/aluminum-paintball-trigger-plate-s-cut-and-anodized/9924 **Category:** Projects **Created:** [June 26, 2015, 6:28pm UTC](https://community.inventables.com/t/aluminum-paintball-trigger-plate-s-cut-and-anodized/9924 "2015-06-26T18:28:05Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 1
### Author: ![EricDobroveanu](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex009/user_avatar/community.inventables.com/ericdobroveanu/32/78000_2.png) [@EricDobroveanu](https://community.inventables.com/u/EricDobroveanu) #### Post date: [June 26, 2015, 6:28pm UTC](https://community.inventables.com/t/aluminum-paintball-trigger-plate-s-cut-and-anodized/9924/1 "2015-06-26T18:28:05Z")
One of the first things I wanted to crank out with the X Carve are some trigger plates for a few paintball guns I have. These are always made of aluminum (or steel), I chose 6061-T6 aluminum. The shape is a 2D profile and 3 pockets, not overly complicated. My X Carve is a 500mm x 500mm with NEMA 23’s and a dw660. Heres my first attempt at cutting a trigger plate from aluminum. There is only 1 pocket in the version because it was more of a proof on concept than a final product (I’m still pretty nooby at cutting aluminum). Because I didn’t really get feeds and speeds when I did this, it took about 25minutes to cut. Eventually I got it down to 8minutes cut time. After a lot of testing with feeds I eventually revised my CAD model and produced a small run of 5 total trigger plates. Here are 3 of them. (Excuse the messy, greasy hands, this picture was taken right after cutting and lots of WD40 was used). So they look good enough by my standards, the sides are still a little chatter-y. I then tumbled the parts in a rough/de-burring media for 45-60minutes. A single trigger plate cleaned up, post rough. I switched the bowl on my tumber from the rough stuff to the polishing compound for 36 hours. Not an ideal finish, but I have a buffing wheel to give it a final sheen (about 1.5-2min per plate to get a near mirror finish). So since I’m a paintball anodizer, I’m always thinking of stuff thats made of aluminum that I can anodize. Of course, the plan all along was to anodize these. 1 Blue, 1 Purple, and 3 Black. Now I just need to test them to make sure they wont break instantly. (The white fiber-y stuff all over the parts is just paper towel) Because anodizing is a fairly time consuming process, I have to make good use of my time, so heres a bonus pic of the gun I was anodizing for a client at the same time. I’m extremely please with how everything turned out, especially how the X Carve can handle aluminum fairly well. I wouldn’t cut aluminum though with anything less than the dw660. I tried with the 300w spindle that you can order with the X Carve, but it just takes way too long, there just isn’t enough power. Anyways… Enjoy! --- _[View the full topic](https://community.inventables.com/t/aluminum-paintball-trigger-plate-s-cut-and-anodized/9924)._