CEMENTED CARBIDE CUTTING TOOL,BORING MILLING,FACTORY IN CHINA

Iscar is displaying a selection of its new Logiq cutting tool range designed to maximize machining processes and optimize performance. Integrating Industry 4.0 standards, the tool lines are said to meet today’s machining center demands for increased productivity.

The Logiq fast-feed milling lines feature indexable cutters, solid carbide end Thread Cutting Insert mills and Multi-Master tools with replaceable cutting heads. Logiq4Feed enables rough milling at high metal removal rates and incorporates a narrow double-sided insert with four cutting edges. Mill4Feed is a family of tools carrying square, single-sided inserts with four cutting edges, designed for machining almost any type of metals. The Tang4Feed shell mill family is based on the tangential principle of insert Carbide Boring Tools clamping to ensure a highly rigid structure and impressive ramping down abilities. Micro3Feed and NanFeed use triangular inserts and feature minimal diameters.

Other highlights include Logiq3Cham, which significantly improves drilling productivity,  Logiq4Turn for enhanced performance in general-duty turning operations, Logiq8Tang, a 90-degree square milling shoulder, and Logiq5Grip, a high-efficiency solution for parting and grooving.

Diamond-tipped cutting tools are commonly used to machine non-ferrous materials such as composites, reinforced plastics and aluminum and magnesium alloys. Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) and chemical-vapor-deposition diamond Carbide Milling Insert (CVD-D) are two hard, wear-resistant materials that can extend the life of tools that cut both abrasive and non-abrasive materials.

During turning operations, some non-ferrous materials tend to generate long, continuous chips that can create a problematic “bird’s nest” around the workpiece and cause downtime and quality issues. That’s why carbide turning inserts often have a chipbreaker geometry designed to produce small chips that can be easily controlled and evacuated. Now Tiro Tool, a cutting tool manufacturer represented in the United States by The Cimtek Group, uses seven-axis laser machining to create contoured, 3D chipbreaker geometries for its PCD and CVD-D inserts and tools.

By reducing heat and cutting forces, the 3D chipbreakers extend tool life and improve workpiece surface finish, says Brian Nowicki, The Cimtek Helical Milling Inserts Group’s managing partner. However, Mr. Nowicki points out that laser machining the diamond offers another important benefit: it produces a smoother, more consistent cutting edge finish than traditional grinding. A smooth diamond surface reduces the chance that soft, non-ferrous materials such as aluminum will adhere to the insert and cause premature tool failure. Mr. Nowicki says the company’s TiroWave PCD inserts with laser-machined chipbreaker can last as much as ten times longer than conventional PCD tools when machining aluminum alloys. And the company’s CVD-D inserts are said to last 30 times longer.

The laser machining is also beneficial for preparing cutting edges for the company’s harder CVD-D inserts, he explains. Unlike PCD, which is a sintered diamond powder in a metallic binder matrix, CVD-D is a homogeneous film that is 99.9 percent diamond and is laser-cut and brazed to to an insert. (It’s 50-percent harder than PCD.) Although CVD-D’s higher hardness provides better wear resistance than PCD, it is also more brittle. So to improve edge strength, the company uses laser machining to slightly round or hone the diamond’s edge to prevent chipping during a cut.

Various application-specific 3D chipbreaker geometries allow TiroWave inserts to perform all turning operations from roughing to finishing. The inserts are offered in all ANSI and ISO styles, including square, triangle, round and 35-, 55- and 80-degree versions. In addition, the 3D chipbreaker geometries are available for the company’s drills, reamers, indexable end mills and indexable face mills.

Hip and knee joint replacements, heart valves and products related to trauma injuries, such as locking compression plates, are among the products for which Harvey Tool Company, Inc.’s precision carbide tooling are used to produce. Other applications include spinal Face Milling Inserts components, including Carbide Threading Inserts vertical expandable prosthetic titanium ribs, and Cranio-maxillofacial products, such as flap fix cranial clamps. The aforementioned components are typically fashioned from materials ranging from composites to stainless steels and titanium.

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The carbide tooling offered by the company is involved in carrying out machining applications, such as drilling, milling, chamfering, boring and corner rounding. A variety of coatings, from TiAlN to diamond amorphous and CVD diamond, are available for all tools depending on materials to be machined.

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Modern CNCs are much more forgiving than their early predecessors. In the old Mitsubishi Inserts days, everything had to be just so. Before program formatting enhancements, programmed values required fixed formats (without decimal points), circular commands required cumbersome directional vectors (instead of simple radius specifications) and every command had to contain the same number of characters (before word address programming). Before tool length compensation, programmers had to know the exact length of every tool for a program could be created. Before floating zero, all coordinates had to be specified in incremental mode. And before absolute position encoders, every axis had to be in a planned starting position before the program could be run. The list of simplifying enhancements over the years is a lengthy one.

Even with all the improvements, there are still issues today that can cause programs to fail. These failures can cause lost time, scrapped parts, damaged machines and even injured operators. Three things to watch for are: (1) program formatting mistakes, (2) process mistakes and (3) setup mistakes.

While modern CNCs are quite flexible, there are still issues that will keep you from being able to load or run them. With a FANUC CNC, for example, the letter O is used to specify a program number. Simply mistaking the letter O for the number 0 in a program, which is a common beginner’s mistake, will make the CNC stop loading the needed program and start loading another program whenever a letter O is encountered. A similar mistake that can lead to program loading issues is mistaking the lower-case L (l) for the number 1.

Once a program is successfully loaded into the CNC memory, there are still syntax mistakes that will generate errors when the program is executed. Leaving out the radius designator (usually an R word) in a circular motion command is one of many examples.

With currently available program preparation methods, there is really no excuse for having program formatting issues at the machine. Properly configured computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) systems and tool-path plotters can verify that G-code programs will load properly and, once loaded, that they will run without generating errors.

Inconsistencies in programming methods can also lead to problems at the machine. Many CNC features can be handled in multiple ways. With tool length compensation, for instance, the tool length offset can represent the cutting tool length or the distance from the tool tip to the Z-axis program zero surface. Offset entries must match the chosen method. Choose one method and stick to it for all cutting tools in a program, programs running on a given machine and machines used by the company.

In similar fashion, cutter radius compensation allows the programming of either the cutter’s centerline path or the work-surface path — and offset entries must be appropriate to the chosen method. Again, pick the method that best suits your company and stick with it. 

Next up are process mistakes. The manufacturing process encompasses anything that affects how components are produced. Of special importance to multi-tool, metal-cutting CNC machines like machining centers and turning centers is the order by which machining operations are performed. One common rule of thumb is that all roughing operations should be done prior to any finishing operations. Breaking this rule often results in a process that will not consistently allow the production of acceptable workpieces.

While not something that will cause a program to fail, a poor process can lead to inefficiencies. Cutting tool and fixture selection must relate to the number of workpieces being produced. What is appropriate when running a lot of fifty workpieces probably will not be efficient enough when running thousands of workpieces.

Another process-related issue that can cause program issues is the improper selection of cutting conditions, including depths of cut, speed and feedrate. If cutting conditions are too aggressive, of course, cutting tools will wear out quickly or break. If they are too conservative, efficiency will suffer.

Finally, consider setup mistakes. There are many things a setup person does while getting the machine ready to run a job that affect the way a program will run. This means that even a proven program (one that has been successfully run many times before) will fail if mistakes are made during Tungaloy Inserts setup.

Many setup mistakes may be obvious, like fixture/jaw/clamp placement and cutting tool assignments. If they go undetected during the program’s verification, however, the results could be disastrous.

Other setup mistakes are related to offset settings. For machining centers, the lengths of all cutting tools must be properly measured and entered into corresponding tool length compensation offsets. Likewise, the radius of all side-cutting end mills must be measured and entered into corresponding cutter radius compensation offsets. Program zero assignment values must be properly determined and entered into work coordinate system setting offsets. Similar offset entries must be correctly done when making turning center setups.

In 2022, Platinum Tooling, located in Prospect Heights, Ill., will celebrate 100 years of working in metal cutting and four generations of Hansens Carbide Burr in the industry.

Company President Preben Hansen’s grandfather, Louis Eckart Hansen, worked as a machinist in the Danish Navy’s repair facility. In 1958, Preben’s father, Svend Eckart Hansen, emigrated with his family to the U.S. and found employment within days of arriving in Chicago, Ill. Svend began his career as a machinist and ended it in the 1990s as a master tool maker.

Preben has over 30 years of experience in the machine tool accessory market and over 40 years in the manufacturing industry. Preben’s son, Luke Hansen, joined the company in 2018 as a technical sales specialist for several of the product lines sold by Platinum Tooling, including Tecnicrafts collets and guide bushings for Swiss machines. In his current position at Platinum Tooling, Luke is said to be building valuable relationships Walter Inserts with the North American sales and distribution network of the company. 

Reflecting on 100 years as a family in the manufacturing industry, Preben says, “The machine tool industry has been and continues to be an extremely vital part of our country’s continued success. My son Luke and I are proud to be 3rd and 4th generation professionals involved in this exciting industry.”