A Guide to High-Feed Indexable Milling
Many companies are buying new machine tools, but they forget that having good tools is just as important. Good tools are important for making machines work well. Sometimes it's necessary to spend extra time and money on special tools for certain tasks.
So, how can you find the right tools for your workshop? Here, we will talk about high-feed milling, a milling method that helps machine shops work faster and better.
High-Feed Milling - the Superior Metal Removal Method
High-feed milling is better at removing metal compared to regular methods because of how it works. It uses a special process involving a low angle, shallow cuts, and a quick feed rate. This process helps in taking away heat from the cutting edge by making thinner chips. This means it removes a lot of material quickly, maximizing the metal removal rate.
High-feed milling also produces low cutting forces. The cutter's entry angle decides where the cutting force goes, usually towards the spindle of the machine in a straight line. This reduces vibrations and makes the process more stable, ensuring higher accuracy in the work.
Why Using Special Indexable Tools in Your Shop?
There are many good reasons for a shop to get special indexable tools. Using one tool for spot-facing, chamfering, and counterboring together can help reduce the time it takes to do a job and mean you have to change tools less often. Having one tool for two or more holes can make your work more efficient and easier to plan. If your shop doesn't have many tool stations, a custom tool can be the difference between finishing the job in one go or not.
A custom tool can be made to do one specific job or a few jobs at once:
- Save time when cutting
- Need fewer tools and less time changing them, which speeds up the job
- Meet precision needs that using lots of different tools or steps might struggle with
- Make the job more consistent
- Make the surface smoother and the tool last longer
- Improve the quality of the product and create less waste
- Add detail that regular cutting tools can't manage
7 Benefits of High-Feed Indexable Milling
High-feed milling can make a difference for your workshop. It's famous for making work faster, but it can also help in other ways:
Improve Chip Removal
High-feed milling makes thinner metal chips. It's easier to get rid of chips using high-feed milling than with regular methods. If you can get rid of the chips better, your work will go more smoothly and have fewer issues. If chip removal gets better, it's less likely your tools will break or your workpiece will get damaged, which will help your work go faster.
Make Chips Better
When the chips of metal are thinner and stay the same all the time, it means you can move the tool faster and make less force when cutting. This is the trick to high-feed milling, and why it helps make your work faster.
Moving the tool faster along with thinner chips helps take away most of the heat. When the chips go away, the heat goes away from the cutting edge. This makes the work more accurate, which makes the surface smoother and makes your tools last longer.
Increase Productivity
We talked before about how high-feed milling removes metal faster and makes things more accurate than regular methods. These two things about high-feed milling can really help your work go faster. When you remove metal quickly, it means the job takes less time overall.
Also, when the work is faster and more accurate, there are fewer times when you have to stop and fix things. Time is really important in machining, and high-feed milling can help you make the most of every moment.
Save Money
High-feed milling can help you spend less money. When there are fewer stops in the work, you don't need to do extra operations. These two good things about high-feed milling can lower how much it costs to run your shop.
Using high-feed milling can also make it less likely for your tools to break and make them last longer. Because the heat goes away from the cutting edge when you're using high-feed milling, the tools don't wear out as fast. This can save you a lot of money on fixing or changing your tools.
Enhance Quality
High-feed milling doesn't use a lot of force to cut, which means there is less shaking and more stability in your work. This makes your work more accurate and makes your parts better. Because there's less shaking during the work, the surface of your parts can be smoother and look nicer.
The force used for cutting during high-feed milling stays the same, making your surface finish even better.
More Flexible and Easy to Use
Even though high-feed milling is usually for rough work, it can do lots of different jobs. You can use this process on almost any machining center. High-feed milling works best on a strong machine because it moves fast, but it's simple to use.
Improve Sustainability
High-feed milling doesn't need a lot of power from the machine because it uses low cutting forces. This means it doesn't use as much energy when it's working, which can make your shop more sustainable overall.
Ways to Optimize Machining from High-Feed Indexable Milling
High-feed milling can make your shop work better all on its own. But there are things you can do to make this way of milling even better for your shop.
Check Your Machine
First, think about if your machine can handle high-feed milling. Because high-feed milling moves faster than regular, you need to make sure your machine can keep up with the faster speed.
As we said before, even though high-feed milling can do lots of different jobs and is simple to use, it works best on a strong machine.
Select the Right Tool
The tools you use are of great significance for your work. When you're doing high-feed milling, it's crucial to pick a cutting tool that can handle the fast speeds of this method.
Some cutting tools have special shapes and designs that can make high-feed milling work even better. For example, the CoroMill MH20 tool from Sandvik Coromant is great for high-feed milling. It has an open insert pocket that helps clear away chips and stop them from getting cut again. This feature is really useful in high-feed milling because it stops chips from sticking to the tool.
By choosing the right cutting tool, you can make your high-feed milling work more productive.
Monitoring and Adjusting Your Work
Just like with anything you do, it's smart to keep an eye on how well high-feed milling is working for you while you're working. This way, you can see if your shop is getting all the good things from high-feed milling.
Having someone else check on things can be really helpful! ASIATOOLS can work with you as your partner for machining solutions to ensure smooth progress.
Get High Efficient Machining Solution with ASIATOOLS Milling Tools
In the competitive manufacturing field, ASIATOOLS milling tools are designed to be super productive. They can move quickly and have many cutting edges in each insert. These special features help you get accurate and reliable results every time. By picking ASIATOOLS for your needs, you can stand out from the competition right away.
Our team of experts at ASIATOOLS have rich experience for metalworking. They can offer you technical help and advice for saving money. Contact us today, and we can help you find the best solution for workshop!
