You guys are the best, really. All of you. Thank you so much for sharing your time and knowledge with me and all the rest who will learn from these posts. Only hope someday I can pay it forward. You guys inspire me.

This is all new to me as we have all ways edm'ed our dies and small molds. Mostly small detailed stuff. I guess I am spoiled with my tooling as I have tools down to .015 standard ball mills and smaller stuff I've made that has been in use over 9 months without wearing out or breaking. That's in Alum and brass though. So you can see where 2 hours tool life is a little startling at first. But as you said time is money, and if I compare the tooling costs to time and labor saved by convential processes the scales will tip. But I'm a stuborn bast* and I will look for some happy mediums to give me a little more life. Maybe enough time to finish one set of dies.4-5 hours.

I'm running a MIKRON VCP 600 with 42000 rpm. Using Robbjack tools just now. They have a pretty nifty speed and feed calculator at their web site. Check it out when you have time. Be sure to use the die mold tab to select hardened steels. Their speeds seem a little less agressive then some of the other libraries and I am wondering what that will translate to tool life. I ran a .1875 2 flute at .010 doc and .006 step at 14000 rpm and the tool does'nt look or cut like it took much of a beating. It ran for a little over two hours.?? Lot's of questions?????

Looks like you opened the door with the spread sheets,John. Now I have to ask the forum if anyone has had better luck in managing the life of their tools as it seems nuts that you can only get a few hours from each roughing tool.

Hey John, Thanks again..It looks like your spread sheets are a hit..Thank you Hardmill and Carl.. I also liked Carl's link to Robb-Jacks spread sheets as those were the tools I had on hand. Everything went smoothly on my test parts and now I want to see how much I can push the envelopes. Should I base everything on incresed SFM's? Or depts and stepovers? So many questions..And then there's high speed machining in hardened steels with the new axial angle of contact(Ae) formulars. I feel like a mad scientist! It's alive!

Yup, Yup,yup.. hope so. I have used the high feed though, that's pretty cool on soft steel and alum or brass.

No, I didn't have the high feed on but I did have the adjust feed on arc moves switched on in the setup sheet. And I had the percentage turned off on the material and F/P/T fields in the tool definitions. All set now, thanks. Just got to keep kicking down doors till you find it...

OK I'm cutting and all looks fine ,But....My speeds got all knocked down in the post? especially in the helical entry. I know this is a Mastercam issue. My entry speeds got knocked back from 300 IPM to F.01 which doesn't even move. Is this tied into high speed maching parameters? I had to go back and open high speed parameters and bump up my min speeds, but I didn't use the high speed function. And even then all my speeds got knocked back. The tool is cutting like its in butter and I know I can crank it up. My speeds got kicked back to F30 from F73 on my radial cuts.???

Thank you guys for helping me out. I'll give a holler back and let you know my results. Gotta run for fish& chips! And a beer or two!

Where would it dwell? I will use rough pocket, helical entry, center for rough and parallel climb for finish.... Don't scare me

Yea, What he said! Sorry, I was off fighting another battle ..

's ok. thanks. So I be cutting some hard chips tomorrow. I'm going with .187 @ 16000 RPM .002 p/t for 64 IPM. .010 DOC, .005 stepover to Rough. Then .062 @ 40000 RPM .0005 p/t for 40 IPM .003 DOC, .0005 step . To start out. No guts, no glory!

Thank you sir.

lol ! You can never have too much of a good thing!

So I've got .187 at 16,000rpm and 64 IPM at .002 per tooth? So I would've burnt up then huh? Is the .0005 step over at the finish pass sound right?

Thank you Hardmill, I have read your posts extensivly and learned a great deal . I should double the chip load on both paths? And will cleaning up .003 DOC give me a mirror finish?

I hope that someone can help me out. I just don't want to kill my tools.

I don't understand?

Can't you move the curser down to the bottom of the toolpaths

Just a quick question. I am to try milling hardened steel dies for the first time. S7 at Rc 58. I'm really excited about this as it potently can save me a lot of edm electrode burning time. I have read all the previous posts that I could find about it and have absorbed a lot. My question is that as I post my feeds in IPM, They don't seem fast enough. I am using a .1875 two lipped ti-acn ball end mill to rough, a .01 stepdown,a .005 stepover and 30000 rpm. Does 60 IPM sound right That's at .001 per tooth. I will finish with a .06 2 flute Ti-Acn, .0005 DOC and .0005 stepover at 40000 and IPM of 40. Does this sound about right? I will climb mill and run a light oil mist with air. Just sounds slow to me? Can anybody help a hard milling beginner? please.

OK thanks Corby, That worked by just dropping out parcs If/else arc output of IJK's, even though I had taken the force *'s out. Paul, I sent over the zip2go. Still puzzeled what was changed in the update file. I also had helix turned off in the CD arc output. All I had was R's, I's and J's. No K's ?? Boy, judging by these posts, you guys must be putting in some hours. Thanks to everyone for their help.

Corby, I can try that also. Did you use a working V9 post and update by the C-hook to X? Cause my 9.pst worked fine, update did not work right.

Thanks Paul, I will try to get that out later today or more probably tomorrow as it had been nothing but fires here at work. I don't have MCX loaded here at this PC so I can't send you a file from here. I only have MC9 here till I can start posting from X.

Thanks I put it in a folder MCposts V9 works fine for 9, X doesn't. Keeps puttimg darned I's and J's along with the R's..???

O.K. I have tried a new update 6 times now , same result. It's in the post somewhere..I wont give up!