I finally got down to it and ordered a couple of aluminum cutting bits for the Shapeoko CNC router. I bought them off of the site Bits and Bits which has a wide selection of them to choose from. I ordered a 1/8" 3 flute end mill bullnose and the same of 1/16" for smaller details. They were both about $22 each and adding shipping that bumped it up to $54.00 which is quite a lot for just two bits.

Shortly after they came in my brother gave me 14 used endmills from his shop down in Nevado CA as a late birthday gift. This was great as they were easily $20-35 a piece which I could never afford on my own. They were a bit worn from cutting titanium but a few of them where in decent shape. They ranged from a 1/2" thick to 1/16" which is going to really give me a wide range to practice with. Unfortunately, the Shapekoko can only hold up to 1/4" bits so I won't be able to use the 1/2" unless I get a new holder for it.

As for cutting material I looked a bit around online for different grades what's recommended for first cuts and found some inexpensive 6061 aluminum for $17.00 for a block 11.5"x 2.5"x 1/2".

Unfortunately, today didn't start off on a very good foot. Number one, I forgot to save my files from what I did before so I had to start from scratch, which I didn't think would be an issue. Second, I forgot a few of the steps to getting started. My first problem arose when I tried setting the tool for the router and it wouldn't accept a 1/8" drill bit when I put in all the info. I tried other bits and those worked without issue. I called my brother up @jehtradedollar and asked him why this would be. I feel pretty dumb because this was specifically mentioned in the tutorial I watched nearly a dozen times, and that is, drill bits can't be used to mill out a stock, they can only be used for up and down, so drilling a hole straight down would be an example. He said that if its some cheap bit that doesn't have specifications on the packaging then just to set it as either a flat tip or ball. In this case, I chose a ball head tip even though the actual bit is something different. One of the other issues I kept running into was the router would dive into the wood. How it should work is a slow spiral down descending at about .5mm per layer until it touched the wood at which point it would slow down even more and continue on its toolpath. This would prevent it from starting too early if you were to set the y-axis too high, or measured something wrong in the program. The issue I was having is where the machine would stall as its rising then crash down skipping a gear and the machine would think it's still high above the wood and would cut more than it could eat. The problem, like the other one, was pretty obvious, the wood I was using was 1 5/16" and the router was set too low so when it was raised it would get raised to the maximum height at which point it would stall, then plummet. The solution for this was simple and had a couple of different options. The one I went with was to swap the wood out with something shorter. This was a simple fix which may not be a solution for larger parts. Another fix would be to set the router higher, this would allow the maximum height to be set higher and so wouldn't stall going over 1.5". Another solution would be to set the raised height at which the router descends from to start its spiral to be lower over the wood. For this I set it to be about 1/2" above the wood at which point it would start its descent.