mookins
Plastic
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2009
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Hi everyone,
Back with another odd problem.
Trying to cut grooves in steel pipes which are irregular. The boss hastily went and purchased a machine from the manufacturer; paid nearly $26,000AUD for it and it is absolute rubbish.
I won't even get into the details of why it is rubbish because it makes me so angry just thinking about the stupid thing.
Anyway, I am going to make my own cutting head to attach to our horizontal boring machine to do the job. I have a few options in terms of driving the tool into the work piece. Keep in mind the cutting tool must track the irregular OD of the pipe therefore will be some type of spring loaded mechanism.
First is the traditional way of having a rigid lead screw and slide assembly plunge the tool and a cut is made. The tracking assembly would move this whole part and an ratcheting mechanism would feed the tool to a depth.
I can work with that pretty easily although working out how to get an accurate depth stop might prove tricky.
Second idea is taken from how the grooving machine cuts. This machine uses a leaf spring to apply pressure to the cutting tool which then under pressure, takes a cut at whatever depth I presume an equilibrium is reached.
Does anyone have any thoughts and/or experience or even some actual papers/training manuals etc on cutting tools designed with this cutting method in mind?
Of all the problems with this machine, this cutting technique works surprisingly well and a static depth stop in relation to the cutting tool tip ensures repeatable groove depths.
I do however, have a gut feeling that tooling life may be reduced when using this cutting method as you can't control with a large amount of accuracy how deep the cut is to be made for a specific feed rate.
Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.
-Mike
Back with another odd problem.
Trying to cut grooves in steel pipes which are irregular. The boss hastily went and purchased a machine from the manufacturer; paid nearly $26,000AUD for it and it is absolute rubbish.
I won't even get into the details of why it is rubbish because it makes me so angry just thinking about the stupid thing.
Anyway, I am going to make my own cutting head to attach to our horizontal boring machine to do the job. I have a few options in terms of driving the tool into the work piece. Keep in mind the cutting tool must track the irregular OD of the pipe therefore will be some type of spring loaded mechanism.
First is the traditional way of having a rigid lead screw and slide assembly plunge the tool and a cut is made. The tracking assembly would move this whole part and an ratcheting mechanism would feed the tool to a depth.
I can work with that pretty easily although working out how to get an accurate depth stop might prove tricky.
Second idea is taken from how the grooving machine cuts. This machine uses a leaf spring to apply pressure to the cutting tool which then under pressure, takes a cut at whatever depth I presume an equilibrium is reached.
Does anyone have any thoughts and/or experience or even some actual papers/training manuals etc on cutting tools designed with this cutting method in mind?
Of all the problems with this machine, this cutting technique works surprisingly well and a static depth stop in relation to the cutting tool tip ensures repeatable groove depths.
I do however, have a gut feeling that tooling life may be reduced when using this cutting method as you can't control with a large amount of accuracy how deep the cut is to be made for a specific feed rate.
Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.
-Mike