am I confused,a .093 dia. drill at 30 times dia. to depth ratio with thru tool coolant? i don't think I've ever seen something like that.

how do you keep that thing from "whipping" at 10700 rpm and almost 3" projection ? it would be cool to see.

when I 1st started I had to call up a mainframe in Michigan on the phone, place the phone in a cradle on my Frieden flexowriter and then write my programs in a language based code called compact II. We had no crt so typing errors were a pain. ctrl A erase last character typed, ctrl Q erase last word, etc. etc. or something to that effect, been a long time. Anybody else remember "timeshare" computing?

Tracy, do you mean "thrillers" combination drill/thread mills? If so, how did your test go. how did you apply it, materials,feeds,speeds. I would love to find an application for these but the only brands I know of only result in "maybe" 1 times dia. to depth. Engineers around here don't seem to believe in anything less than 3/4 times dia. to depth I'd be interested in your results.

ahhhhhhh, the stuff dreams ( and nightmares ) are made of good luck with your project.

ahhhhhhh, the stuff dreams ( and nightmares ) are made of good luck with your project.

Some materials like a positive cutting edge, the dcmt gives you a positive cutting edge, a weaker cutting edge but sometimes necessary. for finishing soft or gummy materials a positive cutting edge is sometimes needed. HTH

I would agree, thread mill. Keep in mind that 304 will work harden from the drill, the chamfer from your spot or center drill can also become work hardened wearing out the lead on the tap almost immediately as it enters the hole. If I had to no choice I would be talking to Emuge for taps, pricey but effective.

I cut alot of M2 and M3-II h.s.s. (annealed state) and have done many side by side tests. I have not found a tool that can compete with Iscar's Helimill, Sandvik comes in about twice a year with a new grade they want me to test but Iscar usually is somewhere around 2 or 3:1 in the tool life category. +1 coolant bad. Their ic950 is a great all around high speed grade or I use ic250 (softer substrate) if rigidity is an issue. I also find many people tend to slow down when they should be speeding up.

I'm at home now without my hasp and don't remember exactly, but in the upper right corner of the thread milling pg. there is an input field that sets the clearance value of where your lead in arc starts respective to your minor dia. if this value is too large your tool will start to arc in from the center of your hole, I will usually set it to .02 / .03 depending on my thread mill size and hole size. HTH

Sounds to me like its time for some new operators. Lots of people out of work.

I'd buy the Iscar tool and whack .25 off the bottom of the shank to get your .75. Iscar makes some pretty good face grooving tools. For smaller grooves I like P.H.Horn.

we just dropped our 1st sub spindle mach. on the floor 4 days ago, I was kinda trained on it today. there have got to be better ways to do things than I was shown. The service mngr. of the company we bought it from teaches mc at a local college. He tells me "forget about using mc to program this it will be more trouble than it is worth" personally I don't believe a word of that sh!t and think he should be some insight from those of you experienced with sub spindles would be a great help to me also.

You're gettin' old? I saw Zepplin in 72 and again in 73 or 4 (I don't remember) in the OLD Chicago stadium. That place could rock.

Just as Jimmy Page was leaving the Yardbirds in 1968 they recorded a concert at the Anderson theatre including a song called "I'm confused", later to become "Dazed and confused". Pages laywers and manager fought like crazy to keep it from being released and succeded until 1971 when it was released on the epic label. Called "Live Yardbirds" it was only on the shelf a short time when they succeded in having it removed. If you're a Zepplin fan it is worth searching out, very cool stuff, IMHO

Zep 1 is definatrly my favorite, raw, messy and unrefined, full of emotion. IMHO.

ah, now I get it I used to wire edm quite a bit of titanium. this funky hue always appeared and changed in itensity from the cut surface outward, almost like steel will blue from heat. I knew it couldn't be heat but could never explain it. cool.

I send mine back to SGS for re-grind, they strip them, re-sharpen and re-coat for about 50% of the cost of a new cutter. more important they are like new (smaller chip gullet of course). some of the re-grind services in our area are a little spotty on quality

I do stay away from the square corner tools if I can, I order the sharp corner end mills with a .01 radius which costs me about $10. extra on a 3/4 dia. but does wonders for tool life.

Aluminum will chemicaly bond to the ALTiN coating on the z-carb. We use the recommended feed & speed on everything within the listed parameters with great results. I think their charts could be a little more specific though. we do back off for tougher mat'ls like H.S.S.s.

I helix into pockets at a 6deg. ramp angle with no problem but chip evac. is a must. I get better tool life in my prototraks that use drawbars than my cnc's with pull studs though.

try the v-carbs for finishing just stay out of tight corners, they kick arse.

Thanks for putting things in perspective trevor, i think you should call it trevor's Mcnuggets cost justification theory

Hey chris, how's things. we're finally getting started on that project, the boss bought a Daewoo puma 2000sy, i should have used the Mcnuggets formula to justify an Okuma, although i think it was more of a delivery issue, 1 week for the puma, 4 weeks for the Okuma. Still haven't got my quote for the capto yet. Thanks again for the time you spent hashing it out with me. It looks like it's going to be KM though.

Hey ron, I too gave up the bottle long ago, I feal your pain bro. ( can you tell I'm home now ). have a good weekend gentlemen. mike

Hi everybody, are we havin' fun yet? i just broke (4) solid carbide thread mills ($150.00 a pop) in the last 7 holes. i broke 6 since the start of this job getting an avg. of 2500 holes a pc. in 1018 crs, 1/4 and 3/8 npt's. (2) of those (6) broke right when the tool started engaging the mat'l, teeth were maybe .005/.01 into cut, Iscar replaced those at no cost because they couldn't explain failure . today (2) broke because I'm an idiot , changed the process ( added cuts, faster feed) and didn't run backplot, posted incremental, sent to Mazak as sub program, told the operator "don't worry" , minor change to existing path, just run it.... thinking the tool failed like the other (2) i just put a 2nd tool in and ran the same bad code ( I've been doing this for 27 yrs. shouldn't i know better?). the 3rd tool fails when the guy tries to recut the hole where the last tool failed, bits o' carbide still stuck in the part ( and he's been doing this for 15yrs.) the snowball gets bigger...man i hate working saturdays...sorry guys, just needed to vent before telling the owner I need to replace $600.00 in tooling. But looking on the bright side I only have 57,000 more holes to go.

thanx for the eye opener tmachine & millman, I too have now searched the use of misc. int. and it looks like a much better way to go. Just goes to show, you learn something every day. Now, how do I get that time back I spent messing around with canned text

I think this should not be >, because six is also greater than four and you are using canned text # six. try changing to if cantext = four. HTH

I'm pretty sure that the alterations you made in the text file won't change your post output but only add the text in your canned text fields. You have to change the pcant_out section of your post. I'll give you another example of what I've done.......

if cantext = seven,

[

n, *spindle, *speed, e

n, *sgcode, *sgabsinc, *g_wcs, pfxout, pfyout, e

n, "G43", *tlngno, pfzout, *scoolant, e

]

I also had to define the constant "seven" at the beginning of the post. this turns my spindle on, re-positions my machine outputting my wcs, and outputs my g43, h# and turns my coolant back on

in three seperate lines of code. Like I said before, I really don't know what I'm doing, I just play with this stuff and look at other sections of my post trying to figure what does what. This might be a stupid way to accomplish what I want to do but it works for me. always save what you start with. Maybe someone else has a better way to do this. e-mail me if you need a better expl. of what I did. good luck

Hi Ron, cool part you posted pic.s of. I use canned text for g28 only if I use a program stop and want to check a dim. or flip parts or something of that nature. I go to a point and then insert canned text for m00 and g28 y0 both with the point. I get m00 on one line then g28 y0 on the next. I then go to another point and insert canned text that recalls my wcs,turns on my spindle, and outputs my g43 and h value on (3) seperate lines of code after the M0. I asked my dealer for help writing my post to do this after a prog. stop and was told it would get very complicated and would cost $$$$$$$$$$$$ so I do it with canned text. it was easier for me to figure out. I don't know how to do it with misc. int. or reals. At all tool chngs. my post outputs g28's

that wasn't too hard.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong because I really don’t know what I’m doing but I played around with this to get it to output what I need. Here is one example: I have canned text ques. # 10 set to output a reference return on the y axis, so in the pcan_output section in my post I inserted this statement. At the beginning of my post I had to define ten as a constant also.

if cantext = ten,

[

n, sg91, *sg28ref, "Y0.", e

]

Then in my .txt file as 10. under canned text I changed the statement to “reference return y axis” this way when I open my canned text window it correctly shows what I’ve altered #10 to do. I’ve pretty much changed most of the canned text outputs to do what I need like turn my spindle back on after a program stop etc. etc. I’m sure someone else here can give you better info. Than me, I just play with stuff until it works. Remember to save a copy of your “good” file before starting though. HTH

The Star spangled banner ? I thought it was more like the Star spangled "pop" song. Or maybe the Gospel / pop spangled banner. Personally I prefer a national anthem to be sung as such. But then again I'm old. If you must deviate, I say do the Hendrix version

[ 02-03-2004, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: mike_f ]