drilling inconel

[mig]

hi,

What tools(brand , material etc) best for inconel drilling and taping?

[mayday]

Carbide drills, about 15 SFM .001-.002 per rev

Good ones? Ma ford Twister XD

 

Tapping? min depth then hand tap or threadmill

[robk]

For solid carbide drilling we use mostly Kennametal Y-tech drills with coolant through the tool.

66 SFM works very well with the chipload varied by the tool size.

 

For threading I prefer Emuge brand threadmills, but OSG EXOTAP VC-10 Ni taps work very well also

[mig]

Are you pecking?

[robk]

For the drills that I mentioned above in most cases I do not peck, but for deep holes sometimes it is necessary to peck drill them.

[T_MALENA]

What size hole & how deep?

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Threadmill for damn sure... drills... Titex, Mitsubishi, or Sumitomo Carbide if you want the best life. Kennametal is getting there for steels and aluminum, but their life (in my experience) has been a bit shorter in the super alloy arena. Not tried their newest offerings yet though. I have a superalloy project coming up (in a couple months when the machine arrives) where I may be able to test some though. We shall see...

[T_MALENA]

If the hole size is larger(5/8 +) use Sandvik's 880 indexable drill. Smaller use Titex, they work very good. Also its the same tool as Sandvik with different coatings offered & cheaper. If you must tap & only if you must, I personally only use Emuge for the super alloys. Otherwise per James "Threadmill for damn sure... " Try to drill to depth 1 shot with thru coolant. Use the feeds & speeds from Sandvik & Titex ref books. They both are excellent starting points & both are usually light in the chip load. So 80-100 SFM & 1% of tool dia in chip load - with thru tool coolant. I've run 1/2 dia. Titex drills @1.0 deep at 130 sfm & .008/chip. NOTE this all depends on your app. though. Fill us in as to what dia drill(s) & threads etc. also ASTM# of inconel hardness etc. There is a major diff. in how to cut the broad range of Inconel. But when you are cutting in the "sweet spot" you'll know! When you aren't, you collect lots of carbide to recycle!

 

HTH

[srussell35]

hi we have just bought a new cnc mill(50 taper toyoda).Could you give me an idea of what software i should be looking at .Right now our parts are simple eg. hexes, tapping ,drilling threadmilling but I use mastercam for our lathes in 2d. I was told get solidworks and mastercam for programing. Your thoughts would be great