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Grinding Strategies Go from Good to Great

Maybe your company specializes in aerospace or medical components, and you need to produce complex geometries in metals too tough to cut via conventional machining methods. Or maybe you work in or own a tool and cutter shop, and are looking for faster, more cost-effective ways to produce drills, end mills, and form tools. Whatever the reason, and whatever the requirement, you’re in luck. As with most metalworking technologies, grinding—more properly called abrasive machining—has improved greatly in recent years. How so? For starters, grinding wheel manufacturers have developed new bonds and superabrasivesthat clearly deserve the title “super,” capable of removing more material in less time than ever before. And grinding… Read More »Grinding Strategies Go from Good to Great

Tilting Tools

Turn mill operators are faced with a bewildering number of tooling choices Tooling up a CNC lathe was once a straightforward exercise. Mount and touch off an 80° diamond for roughing, along with whatever profile of finishing tool you fancy. A groover and threader might be needed, and since most turned parts have holes, a drilling station is called for, along with a boring bar or two to finish the hole. And if the machine has a barfeed, you’d best grab a cutoff tool. Allowing for differences in hole size, groove widths and so on, this basic tool assortment once covered the majority of all turning jobs. Lathe life was… Read More »Tilting Tools

From Coding to Chipmaking

Kitchener software developer tackles high speed machining Imagine running into a problem with your G-code—maybe one of the 3D surfaces on the mould cavity you’ve been programming is a little wonky, or a feature blend isn’t quite right. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could call up the CAD/CAM developer and get them to tweak the code for you? If you’re a machinist at Miltera Machining Research Corp. in Kitchener, ON, that wouldn’t be a problem. That’s because Miltera’s sister company is Truepath CAM developer CAMplete Solutions Inc., and the programmers work right next door. Any machinist with a toolpath problem can pick up the phone or take a short… Read More »From Coding to Chipmaking

Cutting it down to size

Machining small parts takes big precision and plenty of know-how Without micromachining, we’d still be watching the Red Green Show on tube-style TV sets and calling Aunt Emma on a rotary dialer to discuss the family reunion. Contact lenses wouldn’t exist, smart devices would be dumb, computers would be the size of a house. But what is micromachining, and how does it differ from hogging out a block of 6061-T6 aluminum, or ploughing a hole big enough for a golf ball in a chunk of tool steel? Smaller than smallJohn Bradford, micromachining R&D team leader at Makino Inc., Auburn Hills, MI, defines it in several ways. “The first element is… Read More »Cutting it down to size

Mini Mills

Nineteen minutes into the second period and the University of Ottawa’s womn’s hockey team, the Gee-Gees, trails by one. Out of nowhere, the Montreal Carabins’ left wing bruiser Helga Lefèvre smashes Gee-Gees centre Holly McDuff into the boards, fracturing her cheekbone and leaving a ragged gash above Holly’s hairline. Blood turns the blue line red, but the crowd roars as the intrepid junior shrugs off the pain; she pulls a third period hat-trick and leads the team to victory. At the hospital, the doctor repairs Holly’s cheek with a tiny metal plate, then uses staples to reattach the flap of skin to her forehead. Because he’s worried about an infection,… Read More »Mini Mills

Tightrope Walkers

In his 2011 MICROmanufacturing article, “Life on the Small Wire,” Dave Kari, director of wire electrical discharge machining at Top Tool Co., discussed the challenges of learning to machine parts with extremely thin wire. Three years later, Kari’s learning curve with micro wire EDMing is far from over. While a typical EDM shop uses wire 0.008″ and above, Kari works with wire one tenth that size—0.0008″ in diameter. “It’s nearly invisible to the naked eye,” he said. “For every new job that comes through the door, you take everything you know and throw half of it out the window. What’s left is the basis for a whole new page in… Read More »Tightrope Walkers

Spot Drilling – Get it Straight

If you’re going to drill a hole, it stands to reason that you want the hole to be straight and accurate. There are many ways to accomplish this, but all involve getting the hole started properly. The main obstacle standing between you and drilling a straight hole is drill walk—the amount the tool deflects from a straight path. Avoiding this usually involves starting a hole with the shortest drill possible followed by successively longer drills until the desired hole depth is attained. The hole is started by “spotting” the workpiece, which involves making a dimple in the face of the part with a very stubby and rigid drill known as… Read More »Spot Drilling – Get it Straight