Six Axis Grinder Designed for Long Drills
With the recent increase in manufacturing in the United States, many companies are finding it difficult to find and hire qualified CNC people. It should come as no surprise that skilled people who were laid off during the recent economic downturn have moved on to other careers—and probably wouldn’t come back to manufacturing on a bet. So we’re left with an entirely new employment pool that is made up primarily of people with little or no previous manufacturing experience. And companies are scrambling to get them trained.
One source for trained people is your local community college or technical school, many of which have recently brought back or upgraded their manufacturing programs. If you haven’t already, you should definitely get to know what they have to offer. Indeed, you should do whatever you can to support the CNC-teaching schools in your area.
Ideally, you should be hiring graduates and sending new hires to the school for training. And you should be bringing in instructors from local schools to augment your own in-plant training by having them teach classes in your facility.
Your willingness to hire a school’s graduates assumes, of course, that you know, understand and agree with the materials presented by the school. That is, curriculum content must be appropriate to your company’s needs. I’ve been in several companies, for example, where managers are not satisfied with what’s being taught in the local CNC-teaching school, so they don’t support the school or hire graduates. If you fit into this category, don’t just complain, do something about it! Here are a few suggestions for how you can help your local CNC-teaching school improve its manufacturing program.
Get in Touch with the Key People
Of course, if you don’t know who to talk to, you really can’t do much to support the school. Make a simple phone call or browse the school’s website to find key people in the manufacturing program (commonly named Machine Tool Technology), including the dean of the department as well as instructors. Then contact these people. Offer your assistance, and ask how you can get more involved with the school. You may be surprised at how happy educators are to talk to you.
Get Involved with Advisory Committees
Almost all CNC-teaching schools have an advisory committee made up of key people from local industry. They help educators determine which specific topics to cover so that when students graduate, their skills match the needs of the companies represented on the advisory committee. Without the support of an advisory committee, educators are left on their own to develop curriculum materials, and what they come up with may not be appropriate for the needs of local industry.
Donate
Schools are always looking for items that will help maintain or improve their manufacturing classes. Machine tools head the list, as they provide the school with lab equipment to work on, but there are countless other items needed to keep classes going. Measuring devices, cutting tools, workholding devices and raw material for lab activities are always in demand. Most schools will CNMG Insert be happy to accept just about anything you no longer need and will often arrange for the removal of unwanted items from your facility.
Provide Plant Tours
Be willing to provide plant tours for current students as well as potential students considering a career in manufacturing. One school I know of uses a local company to demonstrate concepts discussed in class. The instructor provides presentations and practice on a given topic, then brings the students to the company to see how things are done in the real world.
Volunteer
Look for other ways your company can help. When the school holds an open house, be sure you are present and let attendees know about job opportunities at your company. If the school acquires new equipment, offer to help instructors learn how to use it. Let Lathe Carbide Inserts educators know they can call on you when they have a need that you may be able to satisfy.
An Added Benefit
Getting involved with your local CNC-teaching school will give you a hiring leg-up on other companies in your area. If you’re on the advisory committee, you will have a real say in what the school teaches, and you will know what graduating students can do for your company when you hire them. And if you are interacting at all with students, they will get to know your company. If they’ve toured your facility, they’ll have a good understanding of the working environment and what you expect of your workers.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: parting tool Inserts
Walter M5137 Xtra tec XT Cutter Reduces Finishing Operations
A line of positive inserts have been incorporated into Tungaloy's AH905 grade for turning super alloys and other difficult-to-machine materials in the aerospace BTA deep hole drilling inserts and power-generation industries. Featuring PremiumTec surface technology, the inserts improve productivity by preventing chip adhesion and improving chip flow. AlTiN PVD coating improves wear resistance for consistent performance and increased tool life. The inserts are available with six types of chipbreakers for medium to finish-cutting applications. These chipbreakers include PSF, PSS, PS, RS, 61 and all-round chipbreaker types.
The PSF is designed for machining with low cutting forces and is well-suited for finish-turning operations, the company says. It can turn at low depths of cut to decrease the potential for chip-control issues.
The PSS chipbreaker is well-suited for light machining and internal turning operations, the company says. The PS geometry is an “M” class insert developed for highly productive tungsten carbide inserts boring operations.
To accommodate light to medium cutting of super alloys, the RS and 61 chipbreakers have been applied in round inserts. The RS adopts a large rake angle to optimize chip control, while the 61 offers high-feed turning at small depths of cut. The company’s all-round chipbreaker is suited for a range of continuous and interrupted machining processes, generating low cutting forces with improved chipping resistance.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: Cutting Inserts
A Simple Way To Implement A Qualified Tooling System
Shops in North America are machining high-value parts, including parts made from difficult-to-machine metals, as a larger share of their workload. When the MMS editors recently listed topics related to cutting tools that we intend to watch closely, we found this one factor—difficulty—at the heart of much of what is changing about shops' use of tooling. The rest of what's changing can be explained by the always-present pressures to reduce cost and cycle time.
For your consideration, here are some of the trends in cutting tools we think we see:
Exotic materials becoming less exotic
PCD, CBN, ceramic and cermet tools all stand to become more commonplace as a larger percentage of shops push their capabilities to include high speeds or difficult metals.
Closer attention BTA deep hole drilling inserts to coating
Historically, many shops have thought only in terms of "coated" and "uncoated" tools, thinking that all tool coatings perform pretty much the same. As these shops machine more aggressively, they are becoming more attentive to the relative merits of different coating choices.
Dry machining
The economic incentive to avoid coolant may not be as great in North America as it is in Europe, but some American facilities can still cut costs by reducing coolant's use. These shops are evaluating tools for their effectiveness at cutting dry.
Trial-and-error for trying parts
Increased use of bimetals, in which harder and softer metals are fused side-by-side, is one significant development in the design of machined parts. For demanding parts such as these, shops struggle just to find the tools and parameters to cut reliably. They may also adjust their perspective on what constitutes acceptable tool life—changing tools frequently so they can keep the process consistent.
Attunement to vibration
Some shops appreciate that changing the tooling can change the specific, low-chatter spindle speeds where the deepest milling cuts are possible. In the future, the tool may play an even greater role where vibration is concerned. Research is being directed at "tunable" tooling that cuts smoothly at predetermined speeds.
Cost-effective tool management
An increased use of high-end cutting tools can turn the traditional tool crib into a costly glut of tied-up capital. In part by working with tool suppliers to achieve smaller and more frequent shipments, shops are cemented carbide inserts finding ways to reduce this inventory expense.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: high feed milling Insert
Inserts Offer Four Cutting Edges, Chip Former
Heule Tool introduces its COFA-X tooling, said to be the first tooling system for slot milling cutters removing burrs consistently from interior uneven bore edges with large intersections, such as valves, fittings and hydraulic manifolds. The product is designed for completely eliminating secondary burrs from cross holes with an identical or nearly identical diameter crossing each other; bores which merge into one another; and crossing bores with offset centers. This design reduces costs and improves cycles times for operations that were previously only possible with manual deburring, according to the company.
The COFA-X system is effective on fittings, hydraulic tungsten carbide inserts manifolds and other components with a 1:1 ratio of holes and bore diameters of 4.0 mm or larger.
This tooling product is pre-assembled with spring-loaded blade geometry to allow either front or back cutting. COFA-X tools are fully customized and built for application-specific projects.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: CNMG Insert
Allied Machine & Engineering Expands Range of Boring Tools
Tungaloy has added AH6225 grade inserts to its TCB indexable counterboring tool line.
TCB is an indexable, multifunctional counterboring tool line that is designed to be used on a variety of turning machines. The tool bodies are available for cutting diameters from 10 mm (0.394") to 59 mm (2.323"), enabling a range of counterbore diameters for cap bolts and nuts, as well as the rod peeling inserts expansions of existing hole diameters. The cutter bodies come in two styles depending on the intended cutting diameters: a mono block style is designed for machining from 10 mm (0.394") to 43 mm (1.69") diameter bores, while the cutters with exchangeable cartridges are for 26 mm (1.024") to 59 mm (2.323") diameters. The exchangeable cartridges can fine-adjust the BTA deep hole drilling inserts cutting diameters in 0.1 mm (0.004") increments by placing the adjusting shim plates, which are sold separately, between the cartridge and the pocket.
TCB now offers AH6225 grade inserts. This latest physical vapor deposition (PVD) coated grade features a high-hardness, titanium-rich PVD coating, combined with a tough dedicated carbide substrate. AH6225 enables TCB to efficiently cut bores in all material groups, including steel, stainless steel and exotic materials.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: Turning Milling Inserts
Using Variables To Handle Cutting Condition Changes
The Hoffmann Group’s Garant HB 7010-1 turning grade features P10 gradient carbide for wear resistance at the highest cutting speeds.
According to the company, HB70xx line’s smooth exterior and ductile interior was inspired by sharks’ teeth. The Garant HB 7010-1 offers a wear-resistant and thermo-resistant CVD coating made of aluminum oxide Al203 and titanium carbonitride Ti(CN), which protects the carbide substrate even at high cutting speeds and process temperatures. The carbide substrate is particularly resistant to plastic deformation, gravity turning inserts splintering, and brittle fracturing because it is extremely ductile. As a result, this grade offers potential for extended tool life during continuous cutting at high speeds, the company says.
Straightened crystal structures are a key factor in the resistance of this coating. Its extremely smooth surface enables optimum chip evacuation and reduces the friction between the component and the tool material, lowering process temperatures.
In contrast to the casing, the core of the indexable insert is ductile. The carbide substrate is graded, which means that it has an increased proportion of titanium nitride in the outer layer in order to adapt the thermal expansion coefficient to the coating. As a result, the coating optimally adheres to the substrate, the company says. It adds that because of the similar thermal expansion coefficient, BTA deep hole drilling inserts the coating cannot shear away, even at high process temperatures.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: http://oscarspenc.blogtez.com/
Inserts For Aggressive Metalcutting
Techniks’ FID end mill holders are designed for improved chip evacuation, extended cutting tool life and high speeds and feed rates. deep hole drilling inserts The holders feature two internal coolant paths through the bore of the toolholder. These paths flood the tip of the cutting tool with coolant. The slot milling cutters company says this offers manufacturers the benefits of coolant-thru capability without the need to purchase coolant-thru cutting tools.
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The toolholders’ bore IDs are built to a tolerance standard of H5 to minimize runout. They are balanced to 10,000 rpm and come with lab certification for ID accuracy, taper accuracy and balance. The holders are compatible with CAT 40 spindles in sizes to fit tool shanks from ?" to 1".
The Cemented Carbide Blog: http://jimadelaid.insanejournal.com/
Multi Function Cutter Prevents Chipping in Spot Drilling
While machining 2,000 bushings for a hydraulic pump used in the aerospace industry, Kyle Hawley, owner of L.A.Y. Precision Machine, recognized that the CCMT-type carbide cutting tool insert that the shop was using to bore the hole was causing three specific problems:
Mr. Hawley’s cutting tool supplier put him in touch with an application and sales engineer at Horn USA, who recommended the Supermini 105 tool system with an HS36-grade boring bar insert. The inserts BTA deep hole drilling inserts have a carbide substrate, a high-temperature-resistant coating and an adapted cutting-edge geometry specifically designed for hard turning materials ranging to 66 HRC, eliminating the need for cubic boron nitride.
According to Mr. Hawley, the results achieved with the new cutting Carbide Milling Inserts tool exceeded his expectations. Cycle time was reduced from 8 minutes, 5 seconds to 1 minute, 23 seconds, and each boring bar now can be used for 75 parts. In addition, surface finish Ra improved to 20 microinches. Mr. Hawley says that the boring bar can be changed out quickly, which is an additional benefit. All of this adds up to a 78 percent reduction in manufacturing cost.
Read the entire story here.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: carbide drilling Inserts
Extra Tough Tool Steel Meets Its Match In Extra Tough Inserts
Metal additive manufacturing (AM) users have two main options when it comes to removing their parts from the build plates onto which the parts were printed: sawing using a band saw and electrical discharge machining (EDM). Because neither of these machines was specifically developed for the purpose of removing parts from build plates, each has its own set of pros and cons.
As a supplier of EDM equipment, GF Machining Solutions wanted to know more about how manufacturers were using wire EDM to cut metal AM parts from build plates, so it began reaching out to those who were using the company’s EDM machines for this application. “We did a survey of those customers, asking them what their main issues were using EDM. And we collected quite a bit of data from that,” says Eric Ostini, head of business development at GF Machining Solutions.
Using the results from this survey, the company developed an EDM machine that is specifically designed for build plate removal. The CUT AM 500, which was released in late 2019, can handle parts made via any powder bed fusion process, as long as the material is electrically conductive. In developing the machine, GF Machining Solutions found it had to modify nearly every aspect of the traditional wire EDM machine in order to handle the challenges of this single application.
The survey results highlighted a number of issues with using traditional vertical wire EDM machines for removing parts from build plates. According to Ostini, one of the major problems customers brought to the company’s attention was the difficulty of mounting build plates in a vertical wire EDM machine. Because of the orientation of these machines, the build plates have to be loaded into the machine and held essentially on-end relative to the way they’re held in the additive manufacturing machine. These build plates are typically 10-inch by 10-inch steel plates that are between an inch and an inch-and-a-half thick, so they’re heavy on their own. “Right away, just the build plate alone is awkward to hold sideways, and it’s awkward to clamp it to the table,” he says. “Let alone, you have something attached to the build plate, something you’ve grown, so that throws off the center of gravity of the part and makes it even tougher to put it into the machine vertically instead of horizontally.” Customers reported using overhead cranes to load the machines, and a number of methods, including C-clamps, to hold the build plates in position. Not only is this time-consuming, but it also posed safety problems. And these problems are only expected to increase as build plates get larger and heavier.
Another major issue pertained to how parts detached from the build plate in a vertical wire EDM. As the wire cuts, the flushing of the dielectric fluid can cause parts to wiggle and touch the wire, or start bouncing off it. If the part bounces on the wire, the machine goes into a protection strategy that slows the cut. And if the part comes into contact with the wire, the machine eventually short circuits. Users would slow cutting speeds in order to prevent these issues.
The orientation of the build plate in a vertical wire EDM machine also means that parts with delicate features, such as thin walls, are prone to damage as they detach. Parts would fall on top of one another, or hit the bottom of the machine’s tank. “Users would put a lot of thought into how to stagger the parts on the build plate so that when they dropped, they’d drop in between parts instead of dropping on top of each other,” Ostini says. Some users also reported fixturing delicate parts with magnets, or gluing rubber bands to parts so when they fell away from the build plate, they wouldn’t hit the lower arm of the machine.
Looking at the issues users reported in the survey, it seemed to GF Machining Solutions that a horizontal wire EDM machine would be a natural fit for cutting parts from build plates. “As you cut with a horizontal wire, the parts fall away from the wire,” Ostini explains. “They don’t short circuit, you don’t have to have those protection strategies kicking in, and therefore you can cut much quicker.” However, this would require the build plate to be mounted in the machine upside down. According to Ostini, this proved to be the biggest challenge in developing the CUT AM 500.
The company eventually developed a system for the mounting. Users place the Carbide Drilling Inserts plate on the machine’s table right-side up, and clamp down using the same screws that hold the plate in place on the additive machine, or toe clamps, a chuck or another clamping system. Once the plate is clamped to the table, the machine rotates the table to flip it upside down. “As far as health and safety, it’s very simple,” Ostini says.
With the table upside down, the wire moves into position and cuts across the build plate horizontally, from front to back. The parts are sliced from the build plate and gravity pulls them down, away from the wire. Ostini says most customers don’t require parts to be supported as they’re separated from the build plate, so it’s more common for users to allow parts to just fall into the bottom of the tank. For catching fragile parts, the company surface milling cutters developed a basket that can be customized to the application. Users can use set screws to clamp parts to the basket, preventing them from falling entirely. The basket can also be configured with channels to separate parts. The basket then functions like a wine crate, with slats protecting parts from touching.
The layout isn’t the only feature that distinguishes the machine from traditional wire EDM. It’s also faster, for various reasons. Having the parts fall away from the wire without bouncing or making contact means that users no longer have to slow cutting speeds to prevent these issues. And because the machine doesn’t encounter these issues, it doesn’t automatically go into protection mode.
The choice of wire also helps increase cutting speeds. The machine uses a 0.008-inch diameter molybdenum wire, which is stronger than traditional EDM wires. According to Ostini, it’s less prone to breaking and users can put more power into it, increasing cutting speeds.
The dielectric is also specially formulated for speed. Instead of using distilled water, a common dielectric in traditional EDM machines, the CUT AM 500 uses distilled water with additives to increase conductivity. Ostini says that while the conductivity of dielectric for a standard wire EDM application is typically between 20 and 5 microsiemens per centimeter, the conductivity of the CUT AM 500’s dielectric is almost 2,000 microsiemens per centimeter. “We are thousands of times higher than what a standard wire EDM machine is,” he says. “That adds to the ability to cut fast in the machine.” This enables the machine to use wire speeds of 20 meters per second, siginificantly faster than the wire speed of a traditional wire EDM, which moves at about 13 meters per minute. This speed is essential to the cut. “We don’t use any flushing like standard wire EDM machines use in their machines,” Ostini explains. This is because it’s difficult to flush dielectric into the cut when removing parts from a build plate. There are multiple cuts occurring at the same time, and the parts can block the nozzles from flushing dielectric towards some of the cuts. Ineffective flushing can slow the EDM process and make it more prone to wire breakage. However, GF Machining Solutions determined that by drastically increasing the wire speed, the wire drags fresh dielectric into the cut, creating a flushing action. As a result of avoiding that slowing, “what we’re seeing is not just a little bit faster, but we’re looking at almost 300% faster [cutting] than a lot of the other wire EDM machines,” he says. “A part that would take 8 hours in a standard wire EDM machine to slice off the build plate, we’re doing it in 1 hour and 20 minutes.”
When developing this machine for AM, GF Machining Solutions knew it wasn’t just competing with vertical wire EDM machines. The machine also had to be able to compete with band saws, which are another common option for removing parts from build plates.
The advantage of EDM generally over band saws for removing parts from build plates is that EDM requires a smaller “sacrificial area.” When a metal AM part is grown on a build plate, the very bottom of the part that’s attached to the build plate is considered sacrificial because it’s cut away when the part is removed from the plate. The size of this sacrificial area depends on the method of removing the part. Traditional wire EDM uses wires from 0.010 to 0.012 inches in diameter, so the sacrificial area needs to be slightly larger than that, in the 0.014-inch range, Ostini says.
Although band saws can cut faster than EDM machines, they’re less precise. The blades dull as they cut, and they don’t always cut in a straight line. This means that parts removed from the build plate with a band saw require a larger sacrificial area, typically between 0.030 and 0.060 inches, according to Ostini. This larger sacrificial area could add significant cycle time in the AM machine. “You’re adding hours to the build time in order to cut faster with a band saw,” he says. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Because the CUT AM 500 uses a 0.008-inch diameter wire that’s thinner than traditional wire EDM machines, it requires a smaller sacrificial area, typically 0.010 or 0.012 inches. “You’re reducing the time it takes to make the part in the additive machine, and yes, it is not as fast as a band saw machine,” Ostini explains, “but because of the extra growth you need to do for the sacrificial area of the build, it outweighs it.”
The accuracy benefits over band saws will increase as build plates get larger, Ostini notes. “You’re only able to put so much tension onto the band before it will start to bow more in the center. That means your sacrificial build area has to be even bigger in order to keep the blade of the band saw from digging into your part as it’s cutting through,” he explains. “Whereas with a wire EDM machine, the wire is very light, and only needs a little bit of tension to keep it nice and straight in the cut.”
The company also developed the machine to be closer to a band saw in terms of costs. The CUT AM 500 only has two axes (a y-axis, so it can go front to back, and a z-axis to go up and down) compared to the four axes on a traditional wire EDM. Consumable costs are also low because the machine re-uses the wire. As the wire cuts through the part, it goes from one spool to another, where it’s reversed and cuts through the part again. “Instead of a typical EDM machine, where you use the wire once and it gets thrown into a basket for recycling, we are actually re-using the wire back and forth, kind of like a knife cutting through bread,” Ostini says. The increased cutting speeds also reduce the amount of wire used, further reducing costs.
Additive manufacturing technology is rapidly advancing, so the company developed the machine to work with the next generation of equipment. For example, although most additive machines use 10×10-inch build plates, the CUT AM 500 can handle plates as large as 20×20 inches (specifically, 500×500 mm). “We already know the next size up of build plates are going to be somewhere in the 18- to 20-inch size, so we built the machine for the near future of what we saw from additive during that survey,” Ostini says. “And of course, we have the ability to make it bigger as the industry makes bigger machines.”
The machine is also ready for full automation, even though powder bed AM isn’t there yet. According to Ostini, robots don’t yet have the ability to reach into the AM machine and grab the build plate through all of the loose powder. In the meantime, the CUT AM 500 can be incorporated into what Ostini calls a “semi-automatic process.” This process uses tooling from System 3R (part of GF Machining Solutions). The tooling system consists of smaller squares that sit on top of a build plate and act as mini build plates onto which the parts are grown. When the parts on these “mini build plates” come back from heat treat, they can be attached to a pallet, making them easy to load for secondary operations, including EDM. “As additive grows and we figure out a way to use a robotic system to remove the build plates from the additive machine and bring them to the secondary operations, we’re ready for it,” he says.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: Milling Inserts
Turning, Tool Management Products Designed for Digitized Shops
The key to more productive machining is using milling and turning tools in the ways they were intended, at optimum feeds and speeds and, most importantly, optimum chip loads.
For conventional machining, tool manufacturers typically recommend cutting parameters assuming a stepover of 50 percent of the tool diameter. Feeds and speeds are adjusted accordingly to deliver an ideal chip load. The alternative is using radial chip thinning (RCT), known more broadly as deep hole drilling inserts constant-chip-load machining or high-efficiency machining.
With radial chip thinning, the stepover is reduced, which, of course, also reduces the thickness of the chip under the same feed rate. To compensate, the feed rate must be increased accordingly to yield the desired chip thickness.
The other big difference with this cutting strategy is in the depth of cut. A traditional approach is to step down 25 percent of tool diameter. With RCT, the depth of cut can be as much as two to three times the tool diameter, depending on the tool. The deeper depth of cut provides much better utilization of the tool’s entire cutting edge, rather than just always cutting with the end of the tool. And since the side load on the tool is greatly cemented carbide inserts reduced (from 50 percent stepover to around 15 percent or less) there is also less load on the spindle, which will save wear and tear on your machines.
Best of all, this combination of faster feeds, speeds and deeper cuts can typically improve metal removal rates by 60 to 70 percent or more compared to conventional machining practice…READ MORE.
The Cemented Carbide Blog: special Inserts
