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

Hey thanks Psychomill. Sometimes we just need someone to lend an ear. You're absolutely right though... some employers just don't seem to understand the concept of "time is money". Til they want to win a bid.... then they're wondering why it's going to take so long to get the job done. It's even worse when you work for someone who just woke up one day after earning their bachelors degree in business management and decided they were gonna go into manufacturing and better yet... machined parts. Yet know nothing about the manufacturing end of the design process. I spend the better part of my time trying to make the CEO understand what we do and do not have the capacity for. Makes for long days and a short book. Anyhow, we only have 10,000 rpm to work with so I'm thinking the cheap solution to my problem is gonna come via solid end mill holders and weldon shank tools. I'm going to keep pushing for the milling chucks. Gonna see if I can get one of the tool guys to bring one in and let us try it out. Thing is, we've been talking about adding a new machine and my goal is to push for more spindle speed so I'm looking to the future with this tooling purchase. Thanks again. Chuck

I agree with these guys. Learning solids is all about building solids. You learn by doing. My fascination with solids started with AutoCad and man I thought it was really cool stuff back then. Then I was blown away again when I started working with SolidWorks. I'm self taught... probably a lot of guys here can say the same. The way I learned solids in a nutshell... 1) Buy books on boolean solid building. Building solids in AutoCad for instance isn't much different than doing it in Mastercam. 2) Anything you see that looks like it'd be a good challenge to model.... model it! 3) Open solids and look at the history tree to see how they're built. Although in many cases, especially at my last job, that may tell you how NOT to do it. Some of these were so sloppy it was hilarious. Good luck with it and if you get stumped, ask questions. Part of learning. -Chuck

Some cam systems are just faster than others at certain things. From what I've seen of SurfCam it is pretty quick processing a 3d toolpath. Gibbs isn't bad and neither is Mastercam. Now Esprit on the other hand..... watching it "build layers" can be like watching the grass grow. I don't know that the speed of processing a surface toolpath is the #1 selling point of a software package anyways. At least it hasn't been at any of the companies I've worked and have actually had a hand in choosing the CAM system. -Chuck

Don't know much about hubs on motorcycles so can't help you there other than to say... look at how the other guys out there are doing it. Sounds like a fun project. You just making the center section of a 2 piece wheel or is this a 1 piece? You guys don't happen to have a mill/turn machine in the shop do ya? I sure wish we did...... As for designs... hey, no limit to the imagination. If you spend too much time looking at what's out there you're just gonna come up with something that looks like something else. Have fun, Chuck

Anyone have luck milling with these things? I've been at the new job for a little better than 4 months now. The guys really needed new holders when I 1st got there and I pushed real hard for Richmill milling chucks but it was a "no go" from the bean counters. Real familiar with milling chucks and shrinkers cause that's what we used last place I worked, so I know how well they perform and feel real confortable pushing them. Anyhow, I ordered a number of Lyndex TG100 collet chucks (short gage lngth) and two sets of Centaur collets. Well, these guys are just fine slotting/profiling with the smaller tools (1/4 and under) and are ok for profile-type cuts with the larger tools but I can't do anything to stop the chatter in slotting cuts with 3/8 and larger end mills. Grind flats and put that same tool in an end mill holder and she cuts like butter. Very dissapointing, cause I just bought some Mitsubishi APX3000 indexable mills and these guys don't come with weldon flats on them. Ran a 3/4" 3-insert cutter in a TG100 the other day and it did not like it at all. Chattered at just .040 doc and I had to mill a couple of flats on the thing and run it in an EM holder just to get through the job. So... it's either buy more end mill holders (we have very few) or find a milling chuck line that is "more affordable". Either that or convince the owners that what we can't afford is the loss of productivity and tool life. Sorry this is so long but it's more of a venting than anything else. Please feel free to voice your experiences with TG100 and/or let me know of any "more affordable" tooling systems. Thanks, Chuck

"Don't forget, though, that good experience is worth something, too, and maybe this shop is the place to stay awhile." Excellent point Bernie! Seems like you have quite a number of resources at your fingertips there. Good learning experience as I see it. When I 1st started out in this trade working with my father trying to learn the toolmaking end of the trade there wasn't as much computer-end stuff in the shop but there was still plenty to learn. I'd venture to say you can still gain a good deal of experience where you're at now... in the meantime, no harm in pushing for a better wage and/or seeing what's out there. Regards, Chuck

I found quite a bit with a quick search through various different brands. Metal Removal's Maestro line is the only thing I could find of the MR lineup... didn't know they were a Kennametal company either. http://www.kennametalipg.com/pdf/MR04013B-Maestro.pdf I have no experience with MR, but for their general line of end mills I'd use the calculator at Robbjack's website. http://www.robbjack.com/html/tech.html Then of course there's Kennametal... http://www.kennametal.com/images/pdf/a01-152_end_mills.pdf Here's information from SGS... http://www.sgstool.com/product/pdfs/HighPe...talog042004.pdf http://www.sgstool.com/product/pdfs/Fracti...alog052004r.pdf Mitsubishi Carbide... http://www.mitsubishicarbide.com/mmus/en/p...diamondstar.pdf Garr... http://www.garrtool.com/pdf/vrx_flyer04_2.pdf http://www.garrtool.com/customersupport.htm By the way, Garr's VRX line is pretty darn good for the money. I ordered a few 1/2" 4F a month or so ago to get me through some nasty A36 job and they performed very well. Think I paid ~$37 a piece. Which goes right along with what betts is saying. It's always a balancing act with tooling. I had a job recently where I really would have loved to have had a long-edge inserted cutter for a 4x dia. deep slot ~3.75" long. Problem was... we were only making 2 of these parts and I just couldn't justify the cost. A cobalt 1.25" 4F wasn't exactly cheap but it wasn't anywhere near the cost of the inserted mill either. So I roughed it to ~3-1/4" deep and left the rest for the long one. Not only that but, I can't think of a too many situations where we've really needed a cutter like that in our shop. 50 parts and I would have placed the order... but those are the situations you're faced with in a job shop. I'd also suggest going to OSG's website and ordering their high-performance and standard end mill catalogs. Very well put together and much more informative than their website. Hey, I'm tickled pink that you're an engineering student wanting to learn more about machining. I wish we had guys like you at my shop cause it'd make things a lot easier on me. Take care.

General guidelines are... TiN = +20% TiCN = 40% TiAlN = 50% Then there's the multi-layer tools which can go even faster. Best thing you could do is follow the tool manufacturer's recommendations, starting at the low end parameters and experimenting. Common sense also goes a long way in analyzing your setup... setup rigidity, tool rigidity, tool length, etc., and compensating for the many variables. May have come across the wrong way in my last response..... your TiCN coating is by far the most applicable across different materials. For your stainless, use it with flood coolants. For aluminum, use flood. Basically, anything you cut with TiCN coated carbides... use coolant. Although I have had good results running it on mild steels with air blast. Anything you decide to cut with TiAlN coating, run dry unless cutting titanium or nickel alloys. Then I'd still use TiAlN with coolant. Look at the premium carebide tool makers online. I tend to like to use the ones who offer the most information on their product. However, OSG-Sossner is a very good tool maker with a pretty pitiful website... their catalog is great though. -Chuck

+.001 -.000? Look at all your tolerances and let us know what they are cause the tolerancing callouts determine the processe$ necessary in producing your parts. If you're just out for hole size with positioning accuracy within a couple thousandths then you can do it the old fashioned way by spotting, drilling then reaming or you can do it the least expensive way by using a good carbide drill in as accurate (TIR) a toolholder as you can afford. I have drilled holes to +.0003 of drill size using quality carbide drills... no centering and no reaming necessary. If hole size is all you're after, then you don't need all the extra machine time. Not to mention, if you start out with a crooked hole, no amount of tru positioning and reaming is going to fix it. Just my opinion, but for a job like this (500 holes) you can't afford to use cobalt. -Chuck

The Z Carbs use a aluminum nitride coating. The coating is suppose to create a layer of super hard aluminum oxide which supposedly has a very low friction coefficient but it wont do this until higher temps are reached. You won't ever get there using flood coolant. I use these end mills and our regional SGS guy is adamant about running them dry. He knows his stuff and spends most of his time testing the tools he sells. I don't know about running them on nickel alloys like Inconel (usually run with coolant) as I only use them on harder steels and stainless. My 2 cents. -Chuck