Very, very abrasive material ideas

[Chris Rizzo]

Working with a company that is machining this eco-board product. Basically paper, wood pulp, glue, (and probably some hippie pubic hair in it). A good quality 1/2 uncoated carbide endmill will literally wear .020 off the diameter in 30min. Yes that's about .0007 per minute! Since the material is soft, the tool will keep on machining.....

 

Any tooling recommendations? Was thinking of diamond coated. However a few tools are custom ground, so they would need to be coated post-grind.

 

10k rpm at 150ipm currently. Going to test and increase the chip load as much as possible. Less time in cut, fewer chips per cycle is my theory. Any other feed/speed ideas?

 

High volume production. Two verticals running 24/7. Regrinding tools almost can't keep up with machine cycles. :/

[GoetzInd]

I like your idea of increasing chip thickness. However, you're gonna have to go diamond to go long through that hippie hair

 

Mike

[Rocketmachinist]

Go with diamond coated tools that are made for composite materials or pcd. They are wickedly expensive but in your case you might come out ahead.

[T_MALENA]

Chris, PCD PCD PCD. if you must pvd & cvd diamond. If you send me a e-mail with some info I can help further. I'm cutting composits like this every day now. And our R&D lab is thinking up even more.

[Chris Rizzo]

T, check your PM's. I put my address in there too.

thx

[T_MALENA]

Chris check your mail. Been a little busy...sorry for the delay.

[Chipmakr]

Check out Salt-superabrasives. Just finished up a project that was extemely abrasive. We orederd some standard items and made up our own custom blanks and had them coated with their diamond grit (as large as a 28 grit during testing). Bottom line is they work fantastic and are a fraction of the cost of pcd. Talk to Frank. http://www.salt-superabrasives.com/ .