Machine Tools Take The Lead - for Now

At one time, say 20 years ago, the tooling company produced new, tougher, longer-life tools and users had either to improve existing machine tools to make most use of them or wait for a machine tool builder to develop a machine that would use the tools effectively and at an affordable price.

Now, with the latest high-speed ballscrew designs or linear motor driven axes, the machine tools are there - at an affordable price - while users harass the tool suppliers to catch up with the axis feed rates and high power/high torque/high speed spindles on today's machines.So, you had machine tools waiting for cutting tool developments.

Well visitors to this year's round of European machine tool exhibitions (such as the UK MTA's MACH 2008 in Birmingham, VDW's METAV in Dusseldorf, Germany, the Spanish AFM BIEMH show in Bilbao or the Italian UCIMU Bi-Mu exhibition in Milano) will find that the tooling companies are doing more than just catching up.

Looking at the European machining developments, there are some terms to get acquainted with first.It is important to distinguish between 'high speed machining' or 'high speed cutting' and 'high speed production' associated with 'highly dynamic machining'.

The German and Japanese machine tool builders make use of such terminology.The difference, as I see it, is as follows.

* HSM or HSC (high speed cutting/high speed machining) - HSC/HSM is defined by some users as when you need to balance the milling cutter - generally at over 10,000/12,000 rev/min - depending what metal one is cutting.HSC is cutting the metal at such a rate that the chip absorbs most of the heat and has flown away from the cutting edge giving neither the tool/insert or workpiece any chance of thinking about heating up.

It means taking a shallow cut at a high spindle speed and high feed rate.

* HSP and HDM (high speed production and highly dynamic machining) - HSP and HDM do not necessarily mean use of HSM/HSC.They really refer more to higher metal removal rates at cutting parameters below HSM/HSC and/or the machine tool cutting less 'air' in repositioning and taking less time to exchange tools.

Equally, the pallet changer or robotic/automatic workpiece handling system is doing the workpiece changeover as quickly as is mechanically and controlably feasible.

HSM/HSC have mostly been applied in high speed finishing - particularly in the mould and die industry - where high-speed finish milling, proceeded by high metal removal rate milling - has almost replaced die-sinking EDM.

Die sinking EDM is becoming more confined to smaller die machining, machining fine or difficult details on medium and large dies and generally fine surface finishing and texturing.Visitors to this year's European machine tool shows should check out the tooling companies.

Milling cutters are continually being developed in terms of cutting geometries and the growing use of micro-grain carbides, combined with new coating formulae to raise rough milling rates in pre-hardened steels and die steels.Some machine tool builders' customers are secretive about revealing tooling suppliers where high speed roughing is concerned.

Certainly high-speed finish milling is appearing on automotive transfer lines as well as in the machining of transmission parts. Generally speaking it is the machining of pre-hardened steels up to and exceeding 65 Rc.

For example, titanium carbonitride (TiCN) coatings have been improved in terms of wear resistance and toughness by the development of 'nanotechnology' to reduce coatings' grain sizes and so improve characteristics by developing chemical vapour deposition (CVD).At least one tooling supplier is offering inserts to use at cutting speeds up to 300m/min on steels.

At the European shows, talk to, for example, Ceratizit, Iscar, Kennametal, LMT Boehlerit, Mikron Tool, Mitsubishi Materials, Sandvik Coromant, Seco, TaeguTec, Walter, Widia or WNT.Now these exhibitions will show you the latest in HDM/HSP.

If you think your two-year-old CNC sliding head automatic lathe or machining centre is fast, you want to check out 2008's offerings.
Some builders claim floor-to-floor cycle times reduced by up to 25% compared with times two years ago on the same type of workpiece.In Europe, the ongoing battle is to keep machining jobs 'at home'.Work handling and 'air cutting' times can be reduced only by so much.The emphasis will soon be switching back again to cutting times.

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