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Source for Cobalt Endmills - Crest Cut Roughers, 1-1/4" and 1-1/2" Dia


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Well, it looks like PTC is discontinuing a bunch of their Cobalt roughing endmills. (Crest-Cut sinusoidal flutes.)

I'm looking for a new supplier for cutters for the larger sizes, specifically 1.250 and 1.500 diameter. (1.500 dia, with 1.250 Weldon shanks)

I've tried Niagara, and they have some sizes, but not much in the larger diameters. I've also found some at Weldon Cutter (Heritage), but based on the price they want per tool, you would think they were adding gold or diamonds into their steel, instead of Cobalt.

Example:

PCT - Ball End 1-1/2" x 1-1/4" x 4" x 6-1/2" = about $250 per cutter.

Weldon - Ball End 1-1/2" x 1-1/4" x 4" x 6-1/2" = about $400 per cutter.

Niagara - Ball End 1-1/2" x 1-1/4" x 4" x 6-1/2" = They don't even stock this length. Best LOC they have in a 1-1/2" x 1-1/4" is 2" of flute!

 

Many of the 1-1/4" Diameter and 1-1/2" Diameter tools we need have either a 4" or 6" LOC. For one Titanium job we have, we have about 15 different cutters, some with corner radius (.03, .06, .125, .250, and .380). About half are "Crest Cut" roughers, the others are straight flute finishers.

So, who besides PCT would you recommend for Cobalt in these larger sizes/lengths?

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2 hours ago, nickbe10 said:

Have you considered a move to the 21st century and carbide  ;)?

I know those big cutters are pricey in solid carbide but how about inserts?

Bro, you have no idea how hard I've pushed to improve this particular part. Some things I can change, some I can't.

This part was programmed 38 years ago for Boeing, and the planning/process is frozen.

There is zero 'engineering' behind this part. I have no models. Well, that's not entirely true, but let's just say that the models we do have do not match the forging (no draft), and each 'Operation' model does not accurately reflect the true stock condition of the part.

This part was originally "programmed" using a wood pattern, on a tracer mill. To perform the roughing cuts, they would wrap a couple layers of masking tape around the pattern.

At some point, it was programmed in Catia V4. We don't have any of those files. Just the NC Code, and Vericut.

For the majority of the improvements that I've made to this part, I was literally writing G-code by hand. Thank God for Vericut Simulation. That's the only thing that saved my bacon.

To 'reprogram' the part I have plotted out the G-code in NX, so I could get the centerline path of my cutters. That works for profiles, but the 3D moves aren't something I can reverse engineer easily. I have managed to replace many tools with carbide, but I only have so much time I can spend on this job. I've got about 75 different endmills, in .750, 1.000, 1.250, and 1.500 diameters. And in those diameters, about half are Crest-cut rougher, the rest are straight flute finishers. Many of the tools have corner radii as well.

 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

YG comes to mind:

HSS Cobalt Cutter Link

Yes, YG-1 makes a bunch of Cobalt as well. The finishers are decent. But their 'Sine-Power' roughers suck. We have to run them at 40% of the feed rate of the PCT cutters. Otherwise we get catastrophic tool failure pretty reliably.

Thanks for the suggestion though Ron, I do appreciate it. 

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2 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

Yes, YG-1 makes a bunch of Cobalt as well. The finishers are decent. But their 'Sine-Power' roughers suck. We have to run them at 40% of the feed rate of the PCT cutters. Otherwise we get catastrophic tool failure pretty reliably.

Thanks for the suggestion though Ron, I do appreciate it. 

Thank you I have not used YG so I have no idea how good they are. Got a sales guy telling a customer better than any tool on the planet and I said whatever you want me to use I will spec it out and then up to you to see if it does what you think it should. I am programming Speeds and Feeds off what a good tool should do. The tool we call out doesn't preform I have other brands that I know will.

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5 hours ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Thank you I have not used YG so I have no idea how good they are. Got a sales guy telling a customer better than any tool on the planet and I said whatever you want me to use I will spec it out and then up to you to see if it does what you think it should. I am programming Speeds and Feeds off what a good tool should do. The tool we call out doesn't preform I have other brands that I know will.

Ronaldo, going off tangent ( :rolleyes: ), I can vouch for YG 2Flute carbides for cutting ally. The strongest tools I've come across.

Colin, have you a friendly tool and cutter company? One that could copy your original design of PTC rougher? 

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2 hours ago, Newbeeee™ said:

Ronaldo, going off tangent ( :rolleyes: ), I can vouch for YG 2Flute carbides for cutting ally. The strongest tools I've come across.

Colin, have you a friendly tool and cutter company? One that could copy your original design of PTC rougher? 

I have heard good things about YG carbide, and their Cobalt cutters with straight flutes work well. It is only the Crest-cut roughers that we have a problem with. The Sine profile on the teeth of these cutters is very shallow compared with the PCT version. So I wouldn't completely discount them as a vendor. I like some of their tools, just not the Sine-Power roughers.

I could work with any of these vendors I mentioned to make a custom batch of cutters. Even PCT will make a custom order of the tools they are discontinuing. The issue for me is I don't have time to facilitate a custom order. My last day at my current job is October 12th. I'm moving back to the Seattle area, my hometown, and I'm trying to get some orders in place so the transition of me leaving goes smoothly. It would be easy if all I had to worry about was contacting tool vendors, and placing orders for all these tools. But the reality is I've got a few programs they want finished before I leave. So I have to be conscious of the time I'm spending on placing these tool orders.

The sad thing is that we (as a company) have been going through a painful transition to a new "in-house" tool supplier. When I first started as a new employee, my company had an outfit called IDG, that was our in-house supplier. The guys who worked at IDG had been with us for 20+ years. They were knowledgeable about tools, and the tool buying process. Then, about 6 months ago, someone brilliantly decided that "we could get a better deal" through economies of scale, so they kicked out IDG and brought in Fastenal as the vendor. This has caused massive chaos. Our new relationship with fastenal hasn't gone well at all. They brought in a bunch of new people to order tools, who don't know anything about cutting tools. They couldn't tell a reamer from a drill.

So we have a situation now where every single tool that isn't "off the shelf" has a potential for being mis-ordered. Here is an easy and sad example:

We use Hannibal for many of our reamers. They stock the reamers in semi-finished conditions, and will turn around a custom reamer with a +- .0001 tolerance in 24 hours.

We have many of our tool sheets (legacy) that specify something like: Hannibal Reamer 12345 - .2249 Diameter.

This means "order the 12345 EDP Number, but have them finish the reamer to a customer specific size".

Pretty easy to wrap your head around that, right?

Nope, we have scrapped so many parts because these guys aren't paying attention, or don't know our old system.

So now, every single tool that is customized in any way, must have a full drawing done and must be entered in our Excel spreadsheet to track the tools. We are talking probably a hundred thousand old tools that would need to have drawings made, if we were to try and update our tool inventory.

So, as much as possible, I'm trying to find "off the shelf" solutions before I leave. At the end of the day, I didn't create the issue, and I'm not responsible for solving it (I was told that after bringing up my complaints).

Can you see why moving back to Seattle was an easy decision for me? Lol.

 

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Run Colin.

Don't look back, Keep running...

 

The purchasing thing happens UK too. The head shopper (purchasing manager) thinks that a one stop shop will save a fortune. The more that is spent, the bigger end of month discount is received = win win!

Because buying stationary, toilet paper and cutters from the same vendor makes perfect sense doesn't it :rolleyes:

I've known it bad, real bad, but not AS bad as what you're going through. THAT is a lot of work to "fix", and only putting you back to where you were a couple of years ago. Progress heh!

These people who make these stupid decisions shouldn't be anywhere near aerospace shops, let along in positions of authority.

I hate flying...

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10 minutes ago, nickbe10 said:

So I remember we talked about this a while ago.....have you got something lined up?

I've got some interest from a couple companies, but no offer yet. I'm honestly not that worried about it. I've got a good set of skills, and I'm sure that someone will want to hire me, especially once I'm living in the area.

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34 minutes ago, Newbeeee™ said:

Run Colin.

Don't look back, Keep running...

 

The purchasing thing happens UK too. The head shopper (purchasing manager) thinks that a one stop shop will save a fortune. The more that is spent, the bigger end of month discount is received = win win!

Because buying stationary, toilet paper and cutters from the same vendor makes perfect sense doesn't it :rolleyes:

I've known it bad, real bad, but not AS bad as what you're going through. THAT is a lot of work to "fix", and only putting you back to where you were a couple of years ago. Progress heh!

These people who make these stupid decisions shouldn't be anywhere near aerospace shops, let along in positions of authority.

I hate flying...

Yes, I'm getting out while the getting is good. I feel sorry for the people staying behind. I don't think they yet realize that the boat is filling with water. They are too busy bailing out buckets to notice.

We just had a big all hands meeting, where they were talking about all the money that was spent with buying a company in Long Island, and moving the machines and contracts up to Connecticut. In addition, we've got another production facility in Texas that is a boat anchor. They keep talking about how "the fundamentals of our business are sound, and we are in a great position for success!". What they fail to mention every time is that we are late to all of our customers (our supplier ratings are slipping further each quarter), and our Scrap/MRB rates are through the roof. The more they try and "push" the schedule, the more bad parts we end up making, because people are either not trained on a particular job, or they just don't care. There is zero accountability for making a bad part here. I believe that the shop union has a lot to do with that, but our management team is equally to blame, since they can't seem to see the forest through the trees.

The owners and management team just put in $3 million of their own personal funds into the business, so we could pay our suppliers. How in God's good name is that "fundamentally sound" business practices? That sounds like a disaster to me. Our CEO was joking that "I don't want to be known as someone who makes bad investments", while trying to assure everyone in this meeting that "we're fundamentally sound!".

Look, just because your sales guys are bringing in more contracts, does not mean the business is in a good place. Our scrap/MRB rate was already high. How is trying to double the amount of sales going to "help"? It just means that our deliveries are going to slip further, and we'll triple the amount of bad parts that we are currently making.

Now admittedly, I'm not a business genius. But I'm pretty solid when it comes to addition and subtraction. If we are having problems making good parts at 3.5 million per month of sales, and now they want to get to 6-7 million a month in sales, what kind of outcome would you predict? I know, it is rocket science right?

I keep wanting to stand up in these meetings and scream: "Just because you write something down on a sheet of paper, does not make it real guys!". At 3.5 million, we've got a "Scrap/MRB budget" of $850,000. And they are happy with that number, because it is "only 2% of our yearly gross". But, (and there is always a but, right?), we're already at 1.4 million for this year...

They think they can "grow their way out of these problems", when in reality, these problems just expose the crumbling foundation upon which our company is built...

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37 minutes ago, Newbeeee™ said:

Hmmmm....basic maths mkay....

Management team put in 3mill of their own money to keep afloat.

To get that back out, it has to come from 3mill of profit, yes?

3million dollar question, how long will that take then... :innocent:

People think engineering is a gold mine...

My guess is: they will push as much "output" from the shop as they can, to show that "we are making money", and they will end up recouping their investment when they sell to another investor. If they can pull it off, then sure, they will make money on their investment.

That's a big if though. We just lost a big company as a customer. They were only about 5% of our business, but the fact that we couldn't meet delivery, and they pulled their work from our shop should be cause for concern to everyone in the building. I see it as the tip of a very nasty iceberg. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, I'm not a business guy per se. But basic math doesn't lie, no matter how much you try and obscure the true health of the business. We might get 40% spindle utilization across the shop, in a 16 hour period, on the machines that are running 2 shifts! It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we aren't being nearly as efficient as we could be.

So what is the answer to that? Well, we obviously need to buy more machines  so that we can meet our delivery schedules, right? I mean, doesn't that make super good business sense, rather than trying to get more hours out of our existing machines?  This is what they want ->  🙈 🙉 🙊.

But rather than hold people accountable, they think they can throw more manpower at the problem, and it will just magically go away. This is in a shop where each machinist is tasked with running 2-3 machines at once. They do this so they can get a $2-3 dollar per hour pay differential. What ends up happening? Instead of running one machine, with a high utilization, each machine's utilization ends up dropping because at least 1, if not 2 of the spindles are sitting, while the operator is working on another machine. I have no issue with people working hard, and making more money, as long as it truly makes business sense. I would put a cap on the number of machines an individual is allowed to run, unless they can make the production rate on all the machines, simultaneously.

And don't get me started on "1st piece inspection". I can't tell you how many times I've seen a machine sitting for days, because the part is waiting for 1st piece. But, I'm sure buying more machines is the answer to all our problems. 🙄

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2 hours ago, jeff said:

a shot in the dark, but maybe contact these guys?

http://www.kvtooling.com/crestCutTools.html

 

I think Widia/Hanita makes them also.

Thanks for the link Jeff. I'll see if they would be willing to grind "fresh" Crest Cut tools from stock. It is certainly worth a shot. I may end up just specifying mostly Weldon brand cutters, and just eating the cost. I'd prefer a cheaper tool, but at the end of the day, I think finding a company that will supply these in "stock" form will cause less issues in the long run.

I'm really not looking forward to making drawings for every endmill that gets a custom corner radius. We used to be able to just specify a tool as: CCM-54642, with .250 +-.005 Corner Radius, give that to the Tool Crib. They would then know to either ask the tool manufacturer to add the radius to their stock tool, or order the tools 'stock' with a sharp corner, and just send a batch out to State Cutter Grinding to add the corner radius.

 

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On 9/11/2018 at 7:04 AM, Colin Gilchrist said:

Yes, I'm getting out while the getting is good. I feel sorry for the people staying behind. I don't think they yet realize that the boat is filling with water. They are too busy bailing out buckets to notice.

We just had a big all hands meeting, where they were talking about all the money that was spent with buying a company in Long Island, and moving the machines and contracts up to Connecticut. In addition, we've got another production facility in Texas that is a boat anchor. They keep talking about how "the fundamentals of our business are sound, and we are in a great position for success!". What they fail to mention every time is that we are late to all of our customers (our supplier ratings are slipping further each quarter), and our Scrap/MRB rates are through the roof. The more they try and "push" the schedule, the more bad parts we end up making, because people are either not trained on a particular job, or they just don't care. There is zero accountability for making a bad part here. I believe that the shop union has a lot to do with that, but our management team is equally to blame, since they can't seem to see the forest through the trees.

The owners and management team just put in $3 million of their own personal funds into the business, so we could pay our suppliers. How in God's good name is that "fundamentally sound" business practices? That sounds like a disaster to me. Our CEO was joking that "I don't want to be known as someone who makes bad investments", while trying to assure everyone in this meeting that "we're fundamentally sound!".

Look, just because your sales guys are bringing in more contracts, does not mean the business is in a good place. Our scrap/MRB rate was already high. How is trying to double the amount of sales going to "help"? It just means that our deliveries are going to slip further, and we'll triple the amount of bad parts that we are currently making.

Now admittedly, I'm not a business genius. But I'm pretty solid when it comes to addition and subtraction. If we are having problems making good parts at 3.5 million per month of sales, and now they want to get to 6-7 million a month in sales, what kind of outcome would you predict? I know, it is rocket science right?

I keep wanting to stand up in these meetings and scream: "Just because you write something down on a sheet of paper, does not make it real guys!". At 3.5 million, we've got a "Scrap/MRB budget" of $850,000. And they are happy with that number, because it is "only 2% of our yearly gross". But, (and there is always a but, right?), we're already at 1.4 million for this year...

 They think they can "grow their way out of these problems", when in reality, these problems just expose the crumbling foundation upon which our company is built...

Been there and lived that.  Companies pushing for sales, sales, sales.  Nevermind that we also have to make the product.  And don't even ask about investing in the capital or personnel training.  

Companies like this overvalue the sales side and from what I've seen don't care about the production side of the business or the people on that side of the business.  That's also why I'm not still and my former employer and ran out.  

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On 9/11/2018 at 8:04 AM, Colin Gilchrist said:

I keep wanting to stand up in these meetings and scream: "Just because you write something down on a sheet of paper, does not make it real guys!". At 3.5 million, we've got a "Scrap/MRB budget" of $850,000. And they are happy with that number, because it is "only 2% of our yearly gross". But, (and there is always a but, right?), we're already at 1.4 million for this year...

I have been that guy that has stood up and pointed out those kinds of issues amongst others...it does NOT ingratiate you to upper management...

As such, I have always been prepared to relocate on short notice  ;)

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3 hours ago, JParis said:

I have been that guy that has stood up and pointed out those kinds of issues amongst others...it does NOT ingratiate you to upper management...

As such, I have always been prepared to relocate on short notice  ;)

Trouble is, if you're employed to do a job, to the best of your ability, and chit is being presented, and worst of all you get asked what do you think, well...

You're not doing your job right if you don't tell them. Afterall, you're a paid professional.

I've fallen foul 4 or 5 times in this situation, but I have a mate who is well up the chain in CW, and he will say it as it is and everyone loves him.

He says it laughing, with a happy smile, but most importantly genuinely with no malice.

I think that's the art of it - if you growl and spit it out telling them they don't know their arse from their elbows, it doesn't go down so well :hrhr:

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1 minute ago, Newbeeee™ said:

I think that's the art of it - if you growl and spit it out telling them they don't know their arse from their elbows, it doesn't go down so well :hrhr:

In my youth, that was my strategy...as I got older and tried to be tactful and when possible present solutions to problems that I could...I found the end result was much the same...

Managers & Owners don't like being told their baby is ugly regardless of how you sugar coat it 

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