Matt, Take a look at the Mitsubishi AQX. You can plunge (peck) your P20 at ~.002 IPR with this tool, then mill at .008-.010 per tooth. Otherwise, I'd suggest making a start hole with an indexable drill, then change tools and mill away. -Chuck

I'm with Psychomill and Murlin in that I always run them on the "faster" side. Or so I've been told. In 1018 I'd program 70-80 sfm (856-978 rpm) and 2-3 times the feed of a good HSS drill. In this case, anywhere from 10.7-18.3 IPM. I'd probably opt for a letter "N" drill (.302). In a production setting I'd start on the high side and see what happens. If I can nail the size and the finish is acceptable, then that's what I run. Either that, or I try pushing things a little harder to see what the limit is. I can't imagine reaming a number of holes in a production setting at 3-4 IPM. Sai, I have a formula I use for reaming. It's not based on anything scientific but it hasn't failed me yet. At least... it gives me a baseline to start from. non-ferrous brass, aluminum, etc., I use a feed constant of .024 mild steel .020 high strength alloys, etc., .016 Easy enough to remember? I then take the drill diameter and multiply it by the constant, then multiply that value by 2 or 3 (2-3 times drill feed). That will give us our feed in IPR. Multiply that by the rpm. 3/8 reamer in 1018 @ 70 sfm = 713 rpm .375 x .020 x 3 = .0225 713 x .0225 = 16 ipm Then I go up or down in feed from there. -Chuck

Most of your forged performance pistons are either going to be 2618 or 4032. 4032 is the higher silicon piston (~12%) and is generally used in normally aspirated or mild nitrous/boost engines. 2618 is only ~.25% silicon. Mainly used in high heat engines, it doesn't have the scuff resistance of 4032 and requires more piston-to-bore clearance due to the thermal expansion. Wouldn't be something I'd want for a street engine. Right at home in a heavily boosted/nitroused track-only engine though. The newer hypereutectic alloys are suprisingly tough though. As long as you can keep an engine from detonating, they can manage the heat without much fuss. They are brittle though. -Chuck

I get the 1/2" dia. 1-1/4" LOC SGS Ski-carb from Carbide Depot for ~$68. We're using them right now on a 6061 job... 10k, .007 IPT and they are doing real well. I'll have to give the Destiny 3-fluters a whirl on our next run. One thing I will say though, the Ski-carb is a nice end mill but for the money you should check out Micro 100's "aluminum" grinds. They are ground very similar and from what I've seen, they perform just as well as the Ski's. If you run into jobs where you'd like to use a long l/d ratio mill but don't want to pay carbide prices, try the MiniCut 3-fluters. Nice cutters for the money. -Chuck

quote: I wish I could erase this thread! Oh well. Sorry.No way Paul. I'm a Firefox user too and didn't know about the FTP add-in, so I'm glad you posted it. BTW, another satisfied Zone Alarm user here. Have been for years and it's helped me catch a lot of little spyware programs that my wife and kid seem to be so adept at picking up. "Do you want to allow wewannaknowwhatyouredoingbug.exe to access the internet?" Hell no... let me get rid of that bugger real quick like. Take care. -Chuck

We mill steel and steel alloys all the time on ours. We could talk all day as to whether it's rigid "enough" but the bottom line is... it's an inexpensive machine that does ok considering that fact. It's no Makino that's for sure, but you'd only need see the price tag to know why. Machine rigidity is only one issue though. Have to work towards keeping the whole system rigid too. Tool holders, setups, tools, you get the idea. So yeah, they'll cut steel, just don't set your expectations too high. Won't be near as good as a Kitamura, Mori, Mazak, etc., especially not after a couple of years hard use. -Chuck

I've had very good success with Mitsubishi's APX line cutting D2, D3, A2 and a few other tool steels so far. Inserts are the AO-style with Mitsu's VP15TF coating. For D2, the .75-1.25" cutters generally run at 500-600 sfm (slotting) with .006-.010 ipt, 600-700 sfm (shoulder). For face milling, I use a 2 or 3" Mitsu BRP with .25 radius VP15TF inserts. Being a round insert mill, you have the chip thinning factor to work with but generally we'll use ~.018 ipt for a .060 doc & ~.012 for .120 doc, 450-650 sfm. I'm running these tools on Haas VF-series mills. Other than feed and speed, I think the most important factor to consider is your machining techniques. I follow a few rules with face mills... 1) Dry cut, air blast 2) 66% radial doc 3) 50% feed reduction for tool entry & exit 4) climb cut For end mills... 1) Dry cut, air blast 2) 50% feed reduction for ramp-in or off part tool entry 3) climb cut 4) when pocketing use a "morph type" toolpath routine 5) use corner override For grinding, rough using a gel bonded ceramic wheel. 20% ceramic Milacron wheels are real good for this. Coarse dress and rough dry in one direction. Finish grind with a Norton 46I or H wheel, doc<.0005, .25-.313 cross-feed. Works well for me. -Chuck

Oh the summers are beautiful here Spaz! In all seriousness... they can be quite miserable. Of course, some are worse than others but I can remember a number of 100+º days with ~60% humidity over just the past few years. Just got my fingers crossed that this one won't be a "bad" summer. Take care, Chuck

Well, people will talk. Problem is... it's always hard cutting through the bs when you have people "talking" when they've never had experience with another software package. I've more than a little experience with Powermill and I must say... it's a very capable piece of software. Some of the features in PM really lend themselves well to HSM techniques. However,I feel that MC is just as capable. So it's just a matter of picking the one who's "features" you like more. -Chuck

Boy..... Seems that opportunities abound in this forum. Then, in the spirit of all this excitement, I go look at the job listings here in the Dallas/Ft Worth Texas area. Depressing to say the least. There are some good shops in this area but someone has to die before you can have a chance at the job. Good luck finding your candidate and consider Texas if you ever want to move. -Chuck

Rob, We're also very happy with them. Replaced our 3/4 & 1" Iscar Heli's and we're also seeing increased productivity. Can't beat the insert costs or the replacement policy either. TheePres, Not surprising that your tool rep didn't recommend running dry for that application (titanium)... you'd be crazy try it. The company I'm with right now..... before I got there had a rather large titanium project and they failed miserably in trying to get a quality part out the door. I heard most of this from our Ingersoll guy. Interestingly enough, they were using Ingersoll's Feed Mill on that project. Feed Mills are generally recommended for low-high carbon steel, stainless and alloy steels. So I got into a talk with him the other day about FM's and titanium. He said the previous Ti job would have went fine providing a new fixture had been made to run the parts. The 2nd side operation was fixtured such that there was no support to the hollowed-out underside of the part (~.250 floor thickness) and of course the insert life was very poor. So, I may be tempted to use a FM if ever the opportunity comes along to whittle away vast cubic inches of titanium. The technique most programmers are using to deal with titanium these days is in taking large axial depths of cut and radial depths of no more than 10% of cutter diameter. Just the opposite of what you'd use when machining aluminum. Small radial depths give each cutting edge less in-the-cut time. If you had a 2" FM w/TiAlN coated inserts, you could probably run 350-400 sfm at 10% radial cut and as much axial as your particular cutter will allow. If you took a 3-insert (I'd stick to odd pitch) 2" FM.... running at 400 sfm, .2 radial, .075 axial and say a cpt of .030-.040 we get a MMR of 1.7-2.3 cubic inches. For a 1" 3-flute end mill to achieve that MMR at .003 cpt, it'd need to mill at an axial depth of 1.5" or better. On top of that... being a high-quality 1" coated carbide end mill, it wouldn't be cheap. The FM is by far the more cost effective solution. That's just my logic behind trying one in Ti but it's theory so far and that's all. Take with a grain of salt please. Good luck. -Chuck

TheePres, If you follow the manufacturer's recommendations you shouldn't have too many problems. Of course everything needs to be as rigid as possible so these cutters may be better for some jobs than others. Discretion goes a long ways. 1st off, establish some guidelines for running feed mills.... 1) No coolant. I sent a job out to the shop here not so long ago.... 4140 alloy steel 7"x4"x4", clamped in a vise, Mitsu 2" AJX cutter, ... 1st part ran beautifully with ~10 min cycle time for the cutter. 2nd part starts up and after about 3 minutes of cutting I hear that "Not good" sound from my office. Go out to the machine shop and the operator is staring at the cutter, minus half an insert. It was quite obvious that he'd turned the coolant on manually and I gave him a little education and we were good after that. On a side note, my guys are terrified of running cutters without coolant.... but they're gaining confidence. We ran 2 parts per insert edge, although I feel we could have gone 3 per-edge without much trouble. These cutters emit a very unique sound.... came out later that day to find most of our engineering staff standing around the machine with grins on their faces. 2) Pocket from outside-in, just as Rob mentioned. 3) Reduce feed to 60% or less for ramp-in and pay attention to minimum ramp distances along with max ramp angle. The last 2 parts of that should go without saying. 4) Start with a lighter cut and as you gage machine performance you can push it to deeper cuts. Our Haas VF mills run 60-70% with these cutters and that's kinda where I like them to be so I gage my depth and chip loads to arrive there. Most important is the metal removal rate. It's an easy calc and most people don't use it enough to optimize processes. Rob, How are you liking the APX cutters? Since I got ours into good toolholders I've been real happy with them. So happy that I added 2 2" and 3" cutters to our tool crib. -Chuck

Michael, We are using the C40S7-1000. I can save you the hassle though by saying... it's the shortest gage length Lyndex makes at 2.75". Good point on the retention knobs. Let me just include that the retention knobs are all new and are torqued to 85 lbs/ft. Bought them at the same time as our TG100 chucks. The cuts I referred to in my last post were experienced in extremely rigid setups, with short gage length tooling. The chatter we experienced at just .040 doc with a 3-insert 3/4" milling cutter was very disheartening. Even more so because I had to take a brand new cutter and mill weldon flats on it. Worked beautifully afterwards... Well, the inexpensive route for us right now is to buy some end mill holders and mill flats on our APX cutters. Anyone with good/bad opinions on Techniks? I have gotten the permission to try and work a quantity purchase of milling chucks for the larger tools. Big Sheppard, Lyndex and Richmill are gonna fight (fingers crossed) for our business. Thanks for the help guys. -Chuck

~22" long slot, .400 inches deep and .600 wide. We had a similar cut in a prototype 4340 tool body. Just one part but I am willing to bet with any duration of cut like this, using a 1/2" end mill as in this case, will show signs of thermal shock using coolant. Especially considering all the intersecting slots in this particular part. In anything with short duration cuts, I'd run dry. Anything where the tool is exiting cuts frequently, I'd run dry. So evaluate the work (prototype or production doesn't really matter) and then make a decision to run dry or not. 35k Chipper, thanks for the heads up on Destiny Tool. I'll have to give them a try. Speaking of aluminum, have any of you guys used the new Weldon 3-flute ski-carb end mills? Weldon is recommending max sfm and for a 1/2" end mill, .007 cpt slotting and .008 for light peripheral. That's 420 ipm (slotting) on a 20k machine! Might be interesting to see what they'll really do but I do like their Ski-carb line. Have had good success with their (SGS makes a similar end mill) ski-carb 1/2" at max rpm and .006-.007 cpt, .125-.250 axial depth. Chuck

Just tried it using FileZilla and no problems. Everything seemed accessible. Chuck