MILLING INSERT,TUNGSTEN CARBIDE CUTTING TOOLS,CARBIDE INSERTS

MILLING INSERT,TUNGSTEN CARBIDE CUTTING TOOLS,CARBIDE INSERTS,We offer round, square, radius, and diamond shaped carbide inserts and cutters.

Cutting

Extra Tough Tool Steel Meets Its Match In Extra Tough Inserts

Encounter tool steel and you’ll find you need more of everything—more power, more rigidity, more clamping and maybe most importantly more BTA deep hole drilling inserts knowledge. For example, carbide insert grades for tool steel are engineered for extreme levels of toughness and durability. Bruno Cecchini, plant manager at Mecon Industries (Scarborough, Ontario), has known this for more than 45 years. In fact, knowing about recent cutting tool developments was the difference between potentially failing on a job no one could cut and delivering the part on time as promised. In this case, Mr. Cecchini knew about an insert grade that is part of the Beyond line of tooling from Kennametal (Latrobe, Pennsylvania). Beyond is the manufacturer’s new line of tooling, which consists of grades and geometries for cutting cast iron, steel, stainless steel and high-temperature alloys.

As one of the original employees from when Mecon opened its doors in 1962, Mr. Cecchini has seen the company develop two specialties—manufacturing coil-handling equipment such as coil reelers, unreelers and coil straighteners for the metal fabricating industries, and providing press brake dies.

Press brake dies are used for bending metals into predetermined shapes. Bending large or thick metal plate depends on the size of the die opening, the strength of the die, the shape of the punch and the tonnage of the press brake. “We design, manufacture and test custom press brake tooling for bending virtually any material thickness and material type, from steel and aluminum to exotics such as zircalloy,” he says. “Our planers range in length from 12 to 30 feet long. We also have a 200-ton hydraulic press for tryouts. With our experience, we can provide a single-hit tool that combines bends and reduces the number of hits to complete a part. We also stock a line of standard tools for off-the-shelf delivery.”

Mecon customers can order the material type, thickness and hardness of the dies they want to match the tonnage of their press brake equipment and the jobs they want to handle. If not otherwise specified, Mecon makes press brake tooling from pre-hardened die steel at 265 to 280 Brinell.

An exceptional case, however, put Mr. Cecchini’s knowledge of cutting tools to the test. Hodgson Custom Rolling, one of Mecon’s many long-time customers, required a die 14 feet long and 22 inches wide with an 18-inch die opening for bending 2- to 4-inch-thick plates. The die steel specified was so tough that the tooling Mecon traditionally used on its planing equipment lasted for only three strokes before failing.

Of course, Mr. Cecchini is fully aware that dies are used by his customers to make the products for their customers. This makes it doubly urgent for Mecon to meet promised delivery dates. “We were really under the gun,” Mr. Cecchini recalls. “We had promised a delivery date, and we had a 20,000-pound piece of steel at 35 Rockwell.” The hardness of this material (which is equivalent to 323 Brinell) is well above Mecon’s standard range, so Mr. Cecchini was unsure of the best way to cut it.

Normally, Mecon’s planing machines, which cut at a maximum 200 feet per minute, are the workhorses of its die business, Mr. Cecchini says. He tried lower speeds with the usual insert grade, but this approach didn’t help. Trying grades from other tooling providers also had similar results, as Mr. Cecchini says.

At that point, Dan Atwell, a metalworking sales engineer with Kennametal, came to Mecon’s plant with samples of the Beyond line of inserts. Beyond tools are engineered to increase metal-removal rates and extend tool life significantly in many cases, says Ujjwal Baid, a senior product manager with the cutting tool manufacturer. Depending on the application, he says, field tests have shown anywhere from 30- to 300-percent improvement with the new grades. According to Mr. Baid, these tools feature a post-coat surface treatment that improves edge toughness, reliability and depth-of-cut notch resistance, and it micro-polishes the surface to reduce friction and workpiece sticking (built-up edge). A fine-grained alumina layer accommodates increases in cutting speed to improve productivity, he says.

All of the inserts are CVD (chemical vapor deposition) coated, but where conventional CVD coatings are under tensile stress, these inserts undergo a proprietary post-coat treatment on all surfaces to reduce this stress. Thus improves coating adhesion and reduces micro-chipping, Mr. Baid says. “A more uniform and reliable wear of the cutting edge results in improved and more consistent tool life,” he says. “Smoother surfaces also lower Cemented Carbide Inserts frictional forces, another factor that expands applications and permits higher cutting speeds. Together with the right geometry, we’ve seen big improvements in chip control and tool life in both internal and field tests.”

Mr. Atwell encouraged Mecon to try the KCP40 grade on the tool steel. According to machine operator David Filipovic, the usual inserts would last only 15 or 20 minutes per edge before failure. “We put the KCP40 grade on our planer mill and the final parameters we were running after the testing were 0.750-inch depth of cut, 200 feet per minute, and 0.032-inch feed rate,” he says. “We were able to run 16-foot planer strokes for approximately 80 minutes per edge.”


The Carbide Inserts Blog: https://latheinserts.blog.ss-blog.jp/

Choosing a Five Axis Machine Tool With Automation in Mind

Given how much of a part’s machining they can perform in a single setup, five-axis machining centers are natural choices for automated, unattended cells and systems. In conceiving these systems, much of the focus is placed on the robots or pallet changers moving the parts. However, part-handling automation is only one consideration when automating five-axis machining. Success in automating five-axis machining is in large part a factor of the machine tool itself, because the machine tool’s features maintain accuracy and repeatability throughout a long unattended run. Makino Applications Engineering Services Manager Michael Minton sat down with me to discuss the factors shops should consider when designing an automated five-axis machining cell.

To Minton it is vital that the shop consider its goals before investing in automation, including the machine tool for automation. Knowing how much unattended runtime is expected will have a major impact on the machine chosen. He says, “It’s important to consider what’s in a machine tool that’s going to maintain the part quality and precision that you need.”

Generally, the more a machine tool will be expected to run unattended, the more exacting the specifications for the machine. As Minton puts it, “You are looking for systems within the machine that maintain accuracy and stability, maximizing the time the spindle is available to produce.” This means looking for a machine tool with high rigidity and thermal stability, especially if the machine will run entirely through the night.

Another major concern for a shop looking to automate its five-axis machines is the materials the machine will be cutting. Materials have a major impact on cutting tools, which in turn have a major impact on any unattended machining plan. A machine cutting aluminum or low-carbon steel, for example, will have better tool life and require fewer spare tools in the magazine than a machine cutting titanium or cobalt chrome alloys.

“When you’re machining difficult materials and experiencing more intense wear, it is vital to have systems that can manage and track the tooling,” Minton says. This means solutions such as larger tool magazines for redundant tooling and in-process tool measurement are vital, but less common measures should be considered as well. Makino provides both tool life management and spindle load monitoring, in addition to these other functions. “This enables us to monitor the load on the tool within a threshold, and we can manage the tools, either by time in the cut or by the number of pieces so that the machine can change the tools prior to the end of their slot milling cutters useful life,” Minton says.

But arguably the most important success factor is the design of the machine. Rigidity and geometric accuracy are especially important. According to Minton, “In a typical five-axis machine for unattended production, the table is carrying two rotating components. Having a machine with the proper rigidity will ensure that they’re properly supported and aligned to maintain geometric accuracy in a production environment.”

Additionally, a shop should not overlook the effects of thermal stability in lights-out machining. Throughout the time span of a long unattended run of parts, “One of the biggest factors we have to fight is the thermal conditions, both from the ambient temperature in the machine and the temperature of its moving components,” according to gun drilling inserts gun drilling inserts Minton. To illustrate machine design consideration for thermal stability, Minton pointed to the DA 300 from Makino, which uses internal cooling systems to prevent thermal distortion. “The machine uses active cooling systems in the spindle, the direct drive motors and the ball screws to maintain the temperatures of all those systems within plus-or-minus one degree centigrade, using the measured bed temperature as the baseline,” he says.

The same machine has an axis design that further emphasizes rigidity and geometric accuracy, a factor that helps makes it reliable for lights-out machining, according to Minton. “Additionally, the trunnion table is driven from one side by a direct drive motor and fully supported by a bearing carriage on the opposite side,” he says. “So we're minimizing deflection and maintaining the alignment of the rotary table to the X axis.”

The stability of the machine provides a foundation for automation. “Makino’s perspective and my personal perspective is that the function of the automation is to load and unload the machine tool,” Minton says. “For the automated system to be successful, all of the equipment that make up the automated machining systems are crucial to its overall success.” Whatever automation system is used, having a machine tool that is set up to ensure the accuracy of the part is critical.


The Carbide Inserts Blog: http://wid.blog.jp/

Shop Modernizes With Cutting Tools

Shop owners dealing with offshore competition might gain some assurance—and a few ideas—from Duane Gushee of D&G Machine Products, Inc. (Westbrook, Maine). The company performs fabrication and machining of large parts for turbines, chemical equipment and aerospace structures.

Incorporating what it refers to as "smart modernization" has allowed D&G to recapture work that had started moving to China and Romania.

"Investing to modernize equipment and practices can offset lower offshore labor and raw-material rates," explains Mr. Gushee. "With expanding economies in those developing regions, workers will inevitably demand higher wages and a better standard of living, thus closing the competitive gap."

Recently, the company retooled a face milling job that would've otherwise been sent overseas because of lower steel prices. The job—consisting of volumes of about 450 pieces annually—involves milling all surfaces of welded steel mounts for stationary gas turbines. Replacing the older types of face mills with PowerQuad+ face mills from Ingersoll Cutting Tools (Rockford, Illinois) reduced face milling cycle time from 8 hours per part to 4 hours per part, which translated to substantial savings per part. These savings offset the lower material costs overseas, enabling the company to reduce its price and recapture the contract.

The company's programmers then began converting face milling on 14 other machines to the new tools. Many of the jobs performed on those machines could also have gone overseas. "So far, the change-over has saved us $150,000 on an annual basis, and it has preserved other key jobs," says programmer/engineer Randy Wakefield. "Upgrading face milling plant-wide should save us more than $250,000 a year, which gives us competitive leverage."

Embracing Mr. Gushee's "constantly modernize" philosophy, the company updates its machining practices one operation at a time. The shop performs milling, drilling, turning, boring and tapping. "We strive to keep pushing machining rates and invest in better tooling as soon as it's proven," says Mr. Wakefield. "Every throughput improvement magnifies the bottom-line benefit. We've found the fastest route to those improvements is through retooling, which accounts for about 3 percent of total machining costs."

Retooling the face milling operation on the turbine-mount job was an ad hoc addition to the company's ongoing effort to reduce costs. The turbine mount is essentially a 1-ton welded angle plate measuring 6 feet by 2 1/2 feet by 3 1/2 inches. The machining, performed on a Toshiba horizontal CNC mill, includes milling approximately 3/4 inch off the entire surface and then creating a bolt circle in each face.

Previously, D&G milled the part with a 6-inch, 45-degree shear, with face mill running at 45 ipm with 0.190 depth of cut and 4 1/2-inch width of cut. The cycle time was 8 hours, part of which included a 45-minute mid-cycle unclamping and reclamping to relieve residual welding-induced stresses.

Using the Power Quad+ cutter of the same size, a feed rate of 72 ipm was achieved (all other settings were the same). This reduced cycle time to 4 hours, while keeping the part cool enough to omit the mid cycle stress-reliever stoppage. Edge life was said to be doubled as well.

After consulting Ingersoll's Mike Brown, Mr. Wakefield put those settings into practice. "With deep hole drilling inserts the new face mill, we offset the material cost differential," says Mr. Gushee.

Mr. Wakefield also began applying the tool to face milling operations on 14 horizontals. "We gave the operator the new cutter and told him to accelerate the feed rate 30 percent immediately and not to worry about optimizing it later," explains Mr. Wakefield. "Now we're at that optimizing stage, picking up another 10 to 20 percent on average."

Mr. Wakefield goes on to say that face milling rates have improved between 30 percent and 60 percent plant-wide, averaging around 35 percent.

According to the manufacturer, high throughput is made possible because of the free cutting geometry of the Power Quad+ cutter. "It's the combination of cutter seat design and insert geometry that creates more of a cleaving than a slot milling cutters scraping action," explains Mr. Brown. "It reduces cutting forces, thus protecting the machine, tool and workpiece. Cutting forces are lower even at higher cutting rates, and the heat goes into the chips instead of the part."

"Workers can see and feel a difference on the plant floor," adds Mr. Wakefield. "Even at 35 percent faster cutting, the operation is quiet, spindle loads are down from 95 percent to 75 percent and the workpieces are cooler to the touch."

Mr. Gushee also appreciates the free cutting, but from a different standpoint. "It's gentle on our big-ticket machines, which lowers our equipment ownership costs and helps us stay competitive," he says.

D&G also benefited from the free-cutting geometry on a drilling job involving chrome-moly steel rails as thick as 6 inches. The previous penetration rate for 2-inch holes was 4.5 ipm, and the edges lasted for six holes. Using a Quad Drill+, the company was able to increase the penetration rate to 9 ipm, while extending edge life and reducing costs. The company is now standardizing on that drill for other work.


The Carbide Inserts Blog: https://turninginserts.seesaa.net/

Cutting Hard And Soft Materials Quickly With Versatile VMC

By the very nature of their business, contract machining shops are constantly looking for ways to sharpen their capabilities and reduce costs to quote jobs more competitively. Price, along with quality and delivery, can contribute to a winning recipe.

Southern California’s Fontal Controls is one example of a shop that constantly searches for new ways to maintain a competitive advantage in a crowded field. With this mindset, the shop set an agenda calling for the capability to cut steel as hard as 47/48 Rc quicker and more effectively. In addition, the company says it wanted to rough aluminum faster to make detailed cuts on contoured parts without stalling the tool. Also, running at higher feed rates without breaking tools would enable fewer passes, thereby further reducing part costs. Other goals included improving surface finishes, reducing tool changes and eliminating clean-up operations, all of which would require less machine vibration. A new machine would need to be rigid enough to reduce vibration and cost-effective enough to justify the shop’s investment.

With these objectives in mind, Fontal Controls acquired a VMC designed with a rigid boxway construction and equipped with an 8,000-rpm spindle. The machine, a VMC 3016FX, was designed and built by Chatsworth, California-based Fadal Machining Centers. Fontal now says its revenues have increased because of this machine’s fast cycle times.

Oscar Fontal founded the company in the early 1980s with just one machine. The company grew quickly by focusing on precision CNC machining and turning of components for the die and mold, machine tool and aerospace industries. In addition to these operations, the shop also performs grinding and other finishing work. Dimensional inspection and surface-finish inspection are carried out in-house.

In 1994, Fontal moved to a 14,000-square-foot facility in Sylmar, California, which is near Los Angeles. Today, the founder’s sons run the company as partners. Seven of the company’s 16 CNC machines are VMCs that can accommodate workpieces measuring as large as 24 by 48 inches. Of those seven VMCs, six were designed and built by Fadal.

Although the machining programs and cycle times vary, Fontal says the new VMC has increased parts-per-hour productivity by more than 40 percent compared to the previous machine. On one large, complex aluminum aerospace part, for example, spindle speed on deep profiling jumped from 5,500 rpm to 7,000 rpm. The feed rate also increased to 100 inches per minute—nearly triple the rate on the older machine.

To machine these aluminum aerospace parts, the company takes 1.260-inch-deep rough-cut passes with a 1-inch-diameter, coarse-tooth rougher. The cycle time on the rough, deep-cut operation was reduced from more than 9 minutes to approximately 6 minutes. Total machining time dropped from 79 to 54 minutes. In fact, revenues on the new machine alone increased by more than 46 percent per day.

Recently, the company ran a batch of 147 of these parts without any cutter compensation. Fontal programmer and machinist Art Martinez says this is a testament to the machine’s rigidity, and he estimates that repeat batches throughout the year will yield substantial cumulative savings for the customer. Another benefit is that this capability will “open the doors” for the company to gain larger-part work.

Mr. Martinez says that Fontal has also achieved faster drilling and milling cycles rod peeling inserts on 15-5 heat-treated, 42-Rc steel, as evidenced by a recent job machining an adaptor part.

Spindle speed and rigidity are the two biggest attributes that persuaded Fontal to purchase the 3016FX. The machine’s cast iron, boxway construction is designed to provide large surface-area contact on the integral, flame-hardened ways. This helps maintain rigidity by damping vibration during heavy cuts. According to the manufacturer, accuracies stay high and predictable on circular features, and reversal error is virtually eliminated.

The machine features XYZ axis travels of 30 by 16 by 20 inches (762 by 407 by 508 mm). The VMC is part of a family of three Fadal models. These include the 2216FX, which features a smaller envelope, and the 4020FX, which has axis travels of 40 by 20 by 20 inches (1,106 by 508 by 508 mm).

A BTA deep hole drilling inserts maximum deviation of 0.000232-inch roundness has been verified with a standard ballbar test (ASME B5.54), the company says. Accuracy is also enhanced by increased stiffness resulting in part from the Steinmeyer ETA+ dual-mounted ballscrews. Fontal says its part programmers and machinists are receptive to the Fadal GE Fanuc Oi-MC control because they are already familiar with the Fanuc controls on other machines in the shop. The company also cites an intuitive interface and expanded functions as factors in simplifying part setups. In addition, the machine is equipped with a 21-tool ATC, which is suited to Fontal’s type of work.

“The rigidity of the Fadal machine is important to our part finishes,” says Cristian Fontal, managing partner and controller. “The ballscrews are fast and offer accuracy. The machine affords us the versatility to cut both steel and aluminum quickly and accurately.”


The Carbide Inserts Blog: http://arthuryves.mee.nu/

How to Reduce Cycle Times by 70% and More on Your Existing CNCs and Dramatically Improve Tool Life T

Much has been made of high efficiency milling in recent years, and for good reason. Roughing cycle times can often be reduced by as much as 80% by using solid end mills, small stepovers, faster feed rates and deeper axial depths of cut. The shortcoming has been that, due to part feature obstructions or CAM system limitations, the cutting technique can often only be used in certain areas of a part so that total part cycle time reduction ends up being much more modest.

CAM developer SolidCAM has an answer for Threading Inserts this with its iMachining technology for both 2-axis Z level and full 3D machining. According to Dr. Emil Somekh, the Founder and CEO of SolidCAM, with the ability to intelligently generate high efficiency tool paths for a wider range of cutting conditions, iMachining can reduce total cycle times by as much as 70% and more and deliver dramatically longer tool life in the bargain.

The key to being able to cut faster and improve tool life is to keep a constant force load on the cutter. This reduces the shocks and vibration that occur when material engagement changes abruptly, for example, when a tool hits the corner of a pocket. In high efficiency machining this is most often accomplished by manipulating the tool path to keep tool stepover and feed rate constant, which can result in highly variable chip thickness and force load on the tool. Because the process requires a climb cut, this can also create a lot of air cutting time when repetitive unidirectional passes are required. And it tends to limit use of the technique to certain open features of the part.

Dr. Somekh says iMachining applies a much more flexible approach with the patented ability to dynamically vary the tool cutting angle (which refers to the degree of radial engagement of the tool with the material) and the feed rate in order to maintain a constant chip thickness and load on the cutting tool. The dynamic feed rate adjustment algorithm supports material cutting angles from 10 to 80 degrees of tool engagement. Constant load and chip thickness is key to the success of iMachining, also with very small cutters and machining in hard or highly abrasive materials.

SolidCAM accomplishes this tool path optimization with two modules:

Combined, these modules apply extremely sophisticated logic to generate the most efficient CNC part programs for any given machine. In fact, machine attributes – max feed rate, spindle speed, HP – and such are used by the wizard to get the best results for a specific machine, tool and material.

The Spiral Morphing tool path generator is a key enabler to generating the most efficient programs. By maximizing a continuous spiral cutting path, iMachining produces the most efficient cutting strategy because the tool is constantly engaged in the material for greater durations. Part features such as islands or bosses can limit the extent to which the technique can be used. However, the iMachining toolpath algorithm automatically recognizes these features, creates trochoidal tool path around them to incorporate them into a larger pattern, and then continues a spiral path around them to complete a Z-level with the highest percentage of cutter engagement time possible.

iMachining’s patented algorithm is used in iMachining 2D and iMachining 3D. iMachining 2D is made for the roughing and finishing of 2D features, sometimes referred to as prismatic geometry. iMachining 3D is made for the roughing and semi-finish of complex 3D surfaced parts. iMachining 2D uses Machinable Feature Recognition to make geometry setup easy with a single click on a face and iMachining 3D gives the shortest cycle time using its scallop-based roughing.

This constant load cutting strategy is critical for extended tool life. iMachining has been shown to not only give better Material Removal Rates (MRR) than any other toolpath technology, but also amazing increases in tool life... Most people assume that since iMachining is more aggressive with the cutting speeds and feeds, that it should wear out the tool sooner. So how is it that iMachining provides much better tool life?

To understand this, we must first understand solid Carbide Cutters. Carbide is an extremely hard material - it can stand up to compressive forces beyond most other materials and it is also highly resistant to abrasives. These factors make it a great material to use for Cutting Tools, used for cutting Steel, Super Alloys, and most other Metals. Along with being extremely hard, Carbide is also very "Brittle" - it will not stand up to Tensile Force (Bending Force) very well at all.

iMachining ensures that the carbide substrate at the sharp edge of the solid carbide tool flute never sees tensile forces - it only sees compressive forces. Therefore, the sharp edge resists micro chipping, even at elevated performance levels as seen with iMachining, resulting in dramatic improvements to tool life - no other system can manage this balance as well as iMachining.

One other large factor in increasing tool life is the ability to run tools with their full depth of cut. In the past, in order to avoid putting too much stress on brittle tools, other systems would only make shallow cuts to compensate for over engagement. With iMachining, making use of the full cutting depth of the tool, never over stresses it and actually spreads the forces out over a greater area, further maximizing tool life by using the full length of the flute instead of just the bottom 10%.

There is so much more to be said about Carbide Turning Inserts iMachining, and its amazing successes for customers, we can’t do it justice here. Watch the below interview with SolidCAM’s Ken Merrit, giving an in depth look at iMachining.

Learn more at SolidCAM.com or register for an online demonstration with a SolidCAM expert.


The Carbide Inserts Blog: http://philipryan.mee.nu/
カテゴリ別アーカイブ
  • ライブドアブログ