OK guys, try this: http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/get-item.pl?2976&2&sme& ISBN: 0936974001 Product I.D. BK02PUB14

I got mine through the Society of Manufacturing Engineer's website. They have all sorts of technical books and publications avalible. What I really like about the books is that they break down feed and speed recomendations based on depth of cut in just about any material you can imagine. I believe the publisher is "Industrial Press".

I bought one back in the '70's. That one predated coated carbide. Last year I sprang for the new two book set. I use them a lot when a material comes up that I have limited experiance with. Just about all the time I find the recommended feeds and speeds are good starting places. If I have good info from the tool manufacture I go with that. I offered to sell mine to the company I used to work for so all could share. They were not interested so when I got laied off they came home with me.

Mr. mrainey, you are correct sir. That is how I understand it as well.

I always give the porting tool a G04 dwell for a couple of revs just to be sure The sealing surface is smooth and flat. A G82 would work as well I suppose but porting tools are sort of differant critters. I usually have them touch off from the large spotface dia. How do you superstars handle this?

Crazy Millman is right on. I've done lots of porting and the tap is always last. Seems to me that the threads would get rolled over if you ran the porting tool last. I never knew that the sequence was in the ANSI specs. Learn something everyday.

I've had good luck using Vermont Tool's "spott". It is a one insert indexable spot drill with a 144 degree included angle. That way it will nicely nest the point of any drill 140 degrees or less. This tool elimanates the need for resharpening so they repeat well. In most steels I run them at 1800 rpm .001. inch per rev. They can give you up to a .7 dia. chamfer. I use center drills mostly for shaft work where there are subsequent grinding operations.

This discussion reminds me of a friend I had in high school. This guy was a superb nose tackle and still is a mechanical genius. Today he owns and runs a marine diesel engine repair company. I remember his "egg zooka". It was cobbled together out of a scuba divers spear gun but it sure could launch eggs with devistating accuracy. I think the statute of limitations has everyone involved in the clear, but I think it's best not to mention names.

I understood Crazy just fine. He understands office politics. I think he hates it as much as I do but it is still there and it has to be delt with from time to time. Sometimes competent machine shop pros have to jump through the hoops and bark like a seal so the English Literature Majors who happen to be Vice President of Manufacturing can have a nice show and tell. It sucks. But it is the world some of us have to live in. It must be worse in Academia.

Ron, You have brains, balls, and backbone. I want to meet you one of these days. You set the standard. If there were only more like you. Take care friend.

Not yet here. Perhaps Monday. (I hope)...

Same here mcpgmr. I spent many a swing shift running a 10-HC with an Acra 900. Cut my teeth on the old "Big Blue" control. The R's on canned cycles are absolute z values. Z's are incremental from the R's. Cinci gives you a .100 clearance. Say top of part is Z zero. On a Fanuc you would use a R of .100. On the Cinci you would use an R of zero. The tool would rapid to z+.100 off the part surface then go into the canned cycle. Also in a canned cycle the Z value is incremental from the R. Say you have a hole to drill on a flange where the top of the flange is at Z-1.000 absolute and you wanted to drill 1 inch deep into the flange. The code would look like G81X40000Y0Z-10000R-10000. I know. Lots differant than the Fanuc. Made some sense in the days of manual programming. Anybody else remember the P & Q cutter comp? That I never did like.

The Kennametal Z axis cutter worked better than I had hoped. The 3" dia. tool (6 inserts) plowed through the Rc40 steel at 400 sfm with a .006 per tooth chip load. 15 IPM. I was amazed how quiet it cut. Tightly curled blue chips raining off the part. The tool sounded like it was begging for more feed. I'm now a believer. After four of these parts the inserts looked just fine. I had to look close to tell that they had been used. Oh, used air only for coolant. I'll be busy implementing this tool into all similar parts or any part that it make sense to use. Happy New Year to all!!

Any training scheduled for the Pacific Northwest? Pomona might as well be Mars for my company.

Thanks a ton dkintzel. I've just requested a calender for myself and two of the other three programmers at work. Now if Santa will only bring us another seat for Chrismas.

I've got a 3" dia. Kennametal Z axis cutter to try out on a part I've got coming up. The surfaces are simple and not in a cavity so chip evac should not be a problem. The material is hard. About 48 Rc steel. Also we only have V9.1 Mill II. So I might have to get a little creative with this part. Cat 50 taper tool with enough ponys to make this thing work but these are uncharted waters for me. Keep the info flowing in. I'll post what kind of results I get.

This is very interesting. Where I work we have probably 3000 or so programs written in Bravo. What was once upon a time Compact II. You old timers might remember. Before personel computers. Time share and a hard bed plotter was what you had for verification of tool paths. Hey, it was state of the art back in the mid seventies. Time marches on. Bravo was bought out by UGS. No more releases of Bravo are planned. It will turn into ancient Greek and at some point will no longer be supported at all. I'm showing my age but I'm an old APT jockey as well. Anyhow, my company has a few thousand programs written in Bravo. We are now phasing in Mastercam but still have all these legacy programs that still are making parts. Is there something out there we can run the code in and get a usable Mastercam file? I'm talking nc machine code, not Bravo. That would be too much to hope for. Thanks in advance for any and all help. Chop...

Yeah, these Erikson collets are great. One word of caution. Take good care of them. Do not put them in a drawer where they wil bump into each other. Even a slight ding on any of the corners will adversly affect the TIR. These collets can be fixed by stoning them with a fine abrasive "stone". The main thing is to treat these tools with kid gloves. any ding on any of the corners will ruin the true running tool you are looking for.

Yeah, Guido is right. $500 sounds about right. The course was all day Tuesday and Wed., and until noon on Thursday. They covered mechnics of metal cutting, chip groove geometry, edge preps (T-lands & hones), single point threading, hole making, rotary tool holder selection, thread milling, tapping and lots of other stuff. They gave us a very good presentation on failure analysis of cutting tools and inserts. I got a lot from the discussion of "In cut optimiaztion". Tool life vs: max production etc. I have to give them credit for not making it a huge Kennametal ad. I came back with lots of knowledge that I intend to apply at work. I would strongly recommend this class to anyone involved in metal removal.

Guido, I do believe I know you. Yeah the Kennametal U. really rocked. Lots of really smart old boys with white hair that have just about seen it all. As for the plunge milling, G81 would probably work but I'm not thrilled about dragging the tool back up on the retract. The parts I have in mind are not in cavities such as a mold or the like. So chip evacuation should not be a problem. The material is a VERY high strength structural steel. about 42 Rc. The presentation agreed exactly with what James and Hardmill have posted. Primary cutting force right up into the spindle bearings. They also explained to us that this is a roughing process only. You will have to clean up the scallops (sp?) with another tool but the material removal is awesome. Oh, Guido. I'm still wondering how you got the room with the jacuzzi and wet bar. Turbo smooze?

Jack, thanks for making my day. I cannot remember when I laughed so hard and long. This would be great material for a short film. Peace bro...

I like three fluters as well. As for checking the diameter, an anvil mike works just fine.

Wow, So much good info. I've used the WNMG's and they are fine if you are not roughing D2 or really nasty stuff. For that the good ole CNMG is still my weapon of choice. As for broaching on a lathe, I've used the Slater line of tooling with very good results. No dead spindle feeding. You can make hex holes for allen sockets, or even od splines and the like. Later all...

I belive it was about 13 years ago or so that Michael Jackson was featured as half time entertainment. Our fantasy league always has a super bowl party. We had a pool on how many times Michael would grab his crotch. A quick rub did not count. He had to actually grab the crotch and squeeze on camera. I believe that 14 was the final count. The highest guess in the pool was 12 so that person won the pool. Am I shocked at Janet? Why shucks no! I't's just a family tradition.

I don't knock Kerry for doing his time in the Nam and coming out of it mixed up and confused. Same thing happend to me. That said, I do not think I could vote for him. I do not like George Bush's "Immagration Policy", If you can call it that. Truthfully, I would vote for Tony Soprano if he was on the ballot.