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Haas VMC + high feed indexable cutters

Harter

Plastic
Joined
Jul 22, 2010
Location
Sweden
Hi!

Im running 2007 VF2-SS, 2005 VF8 and soon new VF3-YT. (all 40 taper without gearbox) I do mostly aluminum and plastics but now old customer of mine asked if we could do some steel parts involving large work pieces and lots of roughing. Usually i rough my steel parts with BIG Kaiser FCR 32mm 3-flute face mill @ 1800rpm and feeding 1000mm min while taking 80% wide and 1.5mm deep cuts. That is about best these machines can do with cutters i have available.

But getting work this big it feels dumb to waste inserts that are designed for good surface finish and light finishing/semi finishing cuts. I have been looking for Mitsubishi AJX series high feed cutters for steel roughing but only problem is i have no idea if my machines are rigid enough or have enough power to run them properly.

Any ideas?
 
I run a 50mm Sandvik R210 (their high-feed cutters) with a VF-2SS.
For low carbon steel i usually run about 1900rpm 7000mm/min feed. up to 100% wide cuts 1mm deep.
Spindle load is about 160-170%, but the machine isn't complaining.

If you don't really need 50mm I think 40mm would work even better.
 
I just borrowed used high-feed cutter from friend of mine and my world was blown :eek:

This cutter is made by Stellarm and model number is 7792VXD09-A040Z3R
Its 40mm 3-flute high feed cutter with square inserts.

I just pulled 10hp cut with my Haas VF2-SS and it was amazing. 1900rpm and feeding 6500mm/min while taking 35mm wide 1mm deep cuts. Best thing was my workpiece was on Haas TR160 5-axis trunnion and held only by small self centering vice.

Should i record some video of Haas VF2 taking heavy cuts from steel? :)
 
Yeah, I'd like to see that if you have time. Actually, I want to hear it. I have the same machine and have been interested in how well it would work.
 
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IMO 3 flute cutter is bit too rough for VF2. With 4 or 5 flute i could go even faster. But that was pretty stable roughing cut in not-so-stable conditions.
 
Harter, how fast were you cutting in that video? I've been curious about high speed machining of steel materials but most information I find is about aluminum. :(

It looks about a couple of thousand surface foot!!
 
daedalus, while you do research, be carefull to note that High Speed Machining (HSM) is very different from high feed endmills. Do some searches on this site for those and read all you can. He listed his parameters anyway: 780 SFM (which is conservative), 256 IPM (.045 IPT), about 88% stepover and .040" deep.

Harter, did you try cutting in both directions instead of climbing only? With such tiny stepdowns typical of these tools, I can't help but wonder if climb vs. conventional cutting won't effect tool life at all.
 








 
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