Z-CARBS -HELIX OR RAMP ENTRY

[HEAVY METAL]

Good saturday morning to everybody. I know a few of you out there using z-carb endmills. As far as pocket entry what seems to work best with these endmills. I.m cutting 4140 prehard steel.Just curious as to what works best and parameters such as ramp angle.

 

 

thanks hope everyone has a good weekend Heavy

[chris m]

I think we're running about a 3 degree ramp, helix is not practical in the parts I'm making. I believe the tool will take up to about 7 degrees but that's pretty severe.

 

If you're going to use helix I'd suggest a pretty big one because tight helixes are a lot like plunging and the endmills DON'T like plunging

 

C

[jbel]

All that the SGS website says is

quote:

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Avoid straight plunging - ramp or spiral plunge into pockets

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Not a lot of info there. Helixing in will always be easier on your machine than ramping and will maintain higher feedrates.

 

I personally have never tried these mills. Are they that much better? We do a lot of 3D surfacing and we use Turbo-Carb ball mills and really like them. I notice that the Z-Carb's are 4 flute ball mills. Has anyone compared them to Turbo-carb's??

[chris m]

We are not using ball mills, the Z-Carbs we have typically are 3/16 or 1/4 with about a .015 corner radius

 

C

[HEAVY METAL]

Thanks for the suggestions I'm going to start out with ramping 3 deg

 

Heavy

[DavidB]

I prefer helix ramping that way you don't take the full diameter in with and especially small cutters last longer.

 

Use a rad that is smaller than 1/2 diameter so the centre will cut.

 

I would use no greater than 2 degrees for and endmill.

 

Just my 2 metric cents

 

[Tim Aydt Prototek Engineering]

An SGS sales rep up here in the northland gave me the tech-support number for a guy at SGS. His name is Doug and his number is 330-688-6667. This was about 3 to 4 yrs ago. I don't know whether the guy is still there or not. Most often, I tried to pry a tech support number of the manufacturer. I know the sales guy will tell you how to run the cutter, blah, blah, blah, but I call that the sales pitch information.

 

Anyway give it a shot.

 

Good Luck

 

Tim