Who needs coolant????

Came across this video of ceramic end mill cutting nickel alloy - mad!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t4ke40fhvk

i love watching titans of cnc... its just complete machine porn

love it. the great thing about ceramic is you cant use coolant coz it needs to be hot

We have some machines at BAE that rip though titanium and absolutly mad rates, you can't see the cutter for a cloud of chips. These used to be cut with coolant, literally gallons per second flooded at high pressure to cool and remove the chips
However some years ago they moved to tooling that cuts dry and the feed rates are insane, however I recal this was for roughing out only, and the finish cuts are still done under flood coolant, likely to be for surface finish and crack protection

Paul

I've occasionally had a small carbide cutter glowing red but never had the comet-tail of red-hot chips coming off like that!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by depronman

We have some machines at BAE that rip though titanium and absolutly mad rates, you can't see the cutter for a cloud of chips. These used to be cut with coolant, literally gallons per second flooded at high pressure to cool and remove the chips
However some years ago they moved to tooling that cuts dry and the feed rates are insane
Paul

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I'm suprised you can cut Ti dry like that as it burns rather well - sprinkle some fine swarf into a gas flame if you want to experiment! Or maybe they just have to make sure the chips are big enough?

Cutting hard stuff dry on a lathe or mill is std industry practice.
Hard turning or hard milling.

Haas machines do it quite well.
When I was at Haas Spain as the sales manager, I went to see some customers who did hard milling.
Looked just like the video.
Typically, the finish is very good, and the accuracy can be very good.

(Also had an insane 500 ton press, from england, about 80 years old, in use).