Evening Gents,
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As I'm still on the toolpath/feeds & speeds/machine enhancements learning curve and having done a few jobs now, with varying results (and a number of worn out tools) I'm wondering what the kind of ball park tool life expectancy is in general?
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I am pretty sure the answer is "it depends" and on a number of variables such as those on the learning curve in the previous sentence, so I'll give a few parameters to see if you guys have similar experience and how long your cutters remain sharp enough, as I am finding I am going through an 8mm HSS cutter every 2-3 hours of cutting and a little longer for Carbide (3-3.5 hours), but not that much longer.
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My current rough parameters are:
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Material: 6082 T651 Aluminium
Cutter: 8mm HSS and/or Carbide
Flutes: Single for the Carbide and 2 for the HSS
RPM: 10,000
Feed: 800mm/min (plunge using 600mm/min but ramping this over 10mm)
DOC: 1-2mm (I had an accidental 5mm cut once, but that was a shrieking mess, but at least didn't break the tool)
Step-over generally 40-45% but also some slotting, which actually seemed to help with chatter (at least whilst the tool was sharp)
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I have had a few loose bolts & misaligned ballscrew issues on the machine, which I've resolved over Christmas and also have just got hold of a 50litre compressor, which is way, way better than the asthmatic gnat compressor I had previously, so clogged chips should no longer be an issue as well, which didn't help tool life previously.
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The main reason for this post is to get a reference point for tool life, which will help with a benchmark to aim for in terms of tweaking parameters and also whether I'm going to be charging customers for a new cutter as standard when I quote for a job, not that I like charging for essentially learning on the job......
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Oh and whilst I remember, I have noticed the behaviour seems to be that the HSS cutters run fairly noisy to start with and gradually get worse until chatter etc. gets too bad and force a tool change, whilst Carbide (especially the single flutes) are almost noiseless but when they do go blunt, seem to drop off a plateau and deteriorate rapidly. I'm wondering if that is normal for the cutter types?
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Later and also Happy New Year all......
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Chris

PS. I have been buying cutters from APT and RDG (ebay) but also see some what seem to be very cheap cutter from a seller called Supermario-au - anybody bought from this seller? (looks to be Chinese and I havenothing against going that route for the price , but its always a punt on what you get).