Looking for a Ball Nose End Mill that is equivalent to the one that I'm using now. Now I'm running a Harvey Tool (Tool #13862) 1/16" Dia, Long Reach, Long Flute, Miniature Ball End Mill, 3 Flute. The specs on the tool are 1/16" Dia. 0.500" LOC 1.0" Overall Reach 1/8" Shank Dia. 2.5" Overall Length 3 Flute, Solid Carbide This tool is working good for me but my problem is that I'm running this tool on 3 machines and I'm running 2 end mills on each machine. Also I'm having to modify each end mill by grinding the shank so I can achieve a 1.325" depth of cut. Because I'm running multiple machines and using multiple end mills on each machine I'm going thru several tools on this job. The problem is that my purchasing guy told me that Harvey Tool only has a few in stock on the particular end mill that we are running and I'm afraid that I'll run out of tools before I get more. Does anyone know any other company that makes anything close to what I'm using now that I could possibly use as a replacment if needed? Thanks for any input.

Thanks for the input, but I don't think the 1/16" BN EM will ever handle that kind of feed at the LD ratio that I'm having to run. I'm having to run the 1/8" BN EM @ 10K & 10 IPM because of the chatter.

Looking for some advice on a realistic feed, D.O.C. and stepover for a 1/16 BN EM. The tool is carbide and I have to 3D some 0.030" radius in the bottom and corners of a pocket that is 1.280" deep in 6061 alum. The tool only has 1.0" DOC, so had to grind the shank back about 0.300" for clearance. I figure that i'm going to snap the EM's but i need some suggestions on some feeds, D.O.C and stepover amounts. I've never had to cut with this small of and EM sticking out this far (21 to 1 LD ratio). Is this achievable? Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated. By the way I have a 10,000 rpm spindle and I've roughed the pocket with a 1/8" BN EM. Thanks

Just curious, How is most people calculating drill feeds on basic HSS drills? I was tought to use IPR not IPT. Got in this discussion with a co-worker the other day and he said he calculates drill feeds using IPT. Obviously IPT is 2X faster feed, if using a 2 flute drill. But after inspecting the parts that were run on the faster feed all the holes were blowed out anywhere from 0.003" to 0.006" big. The holes drilled on IPR were on size +/- 0.001". As said above, just curious as to what other people are doing. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, I'll check into this.

I've recently switched jobs but at the previous place I used V9 and made all the transitions up to X2MR2SP1. So I've been using X for a few years now and have not been using V9 on a regular basis. At my current employer now they use V9 with no maint releases or service packs, just V9. At previous employer when I used V9 I did have MR's and SP's. With that said, I've been used to saving my mc9 and mcx file names at whatever i wanted to or how ever long I wanted to. I could use a hyphen, comma or number sign in the file name if I wanted to and the name would show up (when you went to get file or open file and had show mc9 or mcx files). Now at my current employer if I save a file and use a hyphen or anything like that then it won't show up as a MC9 file. Not only that, the file name has to be only 8 characters long. I have to choose "ALL FILES" to actually see the file after it has been saved using a hyphen in the file name or if the file name is longer than 8 characters. Is there a setting for this? (I've look all thru the config in V9 and have not found anything) or is this something that changed with one of the maint releases or service packs in V9? Any input on this will be greatly appreciated. This is puzzling me and also my new co-workers think I'm full of bull about this.

Autodesk Inventor has sheetmetal creation and flat pattern mode as well. Pretty sure that it has to be a native Inventor file.

I've recently switched jobs but at the previous place I used V9 and made all the transitions up to X2MR2SP1. So I've been using X for a few years now and have not been using V9 on a regular basis. At my current employer now they use V9 with no maint releases or service packs, just V9. At previous employer when I used V9 I did have MR's and SP's. With that said, I've been used to saving my mc9 and mcx file names at whatever i wanted to or how ever long I wanted to. I could use a hyphen, comma or number sign in the file name if I wanted to and the name would show up (when you went to get file or open file and had show mc9 or mcx files). Now at my current employer if I save a file and use a hyphen or anything like that then it won't show up as a MC9 file. Not only that, the file name has to be only 8 characters long. I have to choose "ALL FILES" to actually see the file after it has been saved using a hyphen in the file name or if the file name is longer than 8 characters. Is there a setting for this? (I've look all thru the config in V9 and have not found anything) or is this something that changed with one of the maint releases or service packs in V9? Any input on this will be greatly appreciated. This is puzzling me and also my new co-workers think I'm full of bull about this.

I have about six surface, finish, flowline operations that I want to high feed. The only problem is that when I select them all and choose highfeed, scan nci, choose min and max feed rate I get several collision detection alarms. But if I choose each operation seperately and highfeed each operation seperately then I do not get any collision detections. I have visually looked the program over in verify and backplot until I'm blue in the face and I feel everything is fine. What I would like to know is why mcam is telling me I'm going to collide one second and not the next with out changing anything. Should I trust the visual verify and backplot, or not?