Longest,widest chips with machining parameters.

[mark costello]

Although I cannot contribute any chips to this post, it might be an enjoyable read. It must contain as much of the data as possible so the rest of Us Guys can learn a thing or two. Who has made the longest or widest?

 

[john.k]

The chips from a 3" drillbit on a big radial drill with a 040 feed are closer to weapons than swarf.

 

[eKretz]

Big planer chips would win. I've made some of those that looked like coil springs off a truck. Sorry, no photos.

 

[moonlight machine]

You don't want long chips on a lathe, it just gets wound around everything and makes a bird nest. I was doing some hogging on the L&S awhile back, She was spitting 9s like a machine gun. 7" dia. 8620 1/2' DOC .012/Rev feed 300RPM 25HP Lodge & Shipley

 

[trevj]

Big planer chips would win. I've made some of those that looked like coil springs off a truck. Sorry, no photos.

Yeah, after a knife tool in a shaper, definately a knife tool in a big ol' Planer would be the size winner, I think!

IIRC, shapers pretty much top out at around 24 inches or so of stroke length, while there are shapers out there that have that in FEET!

 

[Mtndew]

it just gets wound around everything and makes a bird nest

Yep, I call those "Bleeders".

 

[Dave G.]

Longest chips would be from the machines that make steel wool - it's machined from wire drawn across fixed knives.

 

[Zeuserdoo]

We once ran a part made of 101 Copper. It needed a flat bottom, so we used an insert drill. It created a fairly straight chip about 21 feet long. Needless to say, we ended up pecking that insert drill.

 

[chipss]

My longest chip award has to go to high school shop.
I'm going down a hall one day there's a kid holding a chip and slowly walking about 50 feet away from shop class. On the other end there was a kid turning it on the south bend 9 inch.

 

[jims]

Nothing beats a box tool chip on a turret lathe. Once for fun a guy let the chip keep going without breaking it and chip went across shop and out the door like a snake and across the street.looked like a 1 1/2 dia snake.
In all my 60 plus years of machining I have never seen a machine tool cut a chip like a box tool does. The depth of cut can be 3/8 to 1/2 inch per side and the chip comes out like a garden hose or a snake . There is no rats nest type of chip. And it is easy to break chip if you want to. I should say that the cutter should be ground correctly. Micro 100 sells a preground box tool cutter that works great on small lathes like Logan’s. It’s named Micro 100 BT-6. I have taken c12l15 from 1 inch to 1/2 inch in one pass . Granted that is soft steel it‘s still a big cut on a light lathe.

 

[chipss]

^ That certainly beats the high school chip by a big magnitude!

 

[eKretz]

Personally, after having seen more than a few guys get mangled by chips that got caught up in the machine at carbide cutting speeds, I will stop anyone who I see making long chips these days. Doing that is generally a Very. Bad. Idea. It's not so bad with high speed steel cutting tools since you can pretty well stop the machine before the chips have a chance to do any real damage.

One guy I saw running a vertical turret lathe (Bullard) was facing a part and getting a long stringer chip. I asked him to shut it off and he said "no it's fine, I've got this chip hook." and was flinging the stringer back into the middle. Welp, not a minute later it wrapped up around the chip hook, wound right up and caught the palm of his hand. Basically peeled his palm half off. He stopped the feed and shut the machine off. He headed toward me and I asked him to sit down because I've been through these types of things before and I knew he was headed for lightheadedness and possibly shock. Instead he decided to tell me no, he was fine and headed for the first aid cabinet. Not a few steps later he was unconscious and took a header right into the break table, sending it and the chairs flying. Luckily he was okay and a nice collection of stitches later, well on his way to healing.

 

[Thunderjet]

When I was serving my apprenticeship, my foreman showed me how to set up the shaper we had in the back of the shop.
It had been a while since it ran, but he gave me basics and I proceeded to try to run the thing, and got were I was actually making chips, Little ones.

He came back and I saw he was pleased that someone had actually fired it up. the workpiece was just a chunk of hot rolled and was mostly scrap. Now this a fairly large shaper, not fast, but beefy.

Next to the shaper, we had a shield standing. about five feet tall and three feet wide, made from galvanized 16g steel. I could never figure out what it was for, until that day.

Lyle stops the machine and dials down probably 3/4" deep and sets the step over for .060 thou and places the shield in front of the clapper box.

I found out what the shield was for after the third or fourth TINK!

I think you could've killed folks at forty paces with those chips.

 

[eKretz]

When I was serving my apprenticeship, my foreman showed me how to set up the shaper we had in the back of the shop.
It had been a while since it ran, but he gave me basics and I proceeded to try to run the thing, and got were I was actually making chips, Little ones.

He came back and I saw he was pleased that someone had actually fired it up. the workpiece was just a chunk of hot rolled and was mostly scrap. Now this a fairly large shaper, not fast, but beefy.

Next to the shaper, we had a shield standing. about five feet tall and three feet wide, made from galvanized 16g steel. I could never figure out what it was for, until that day.

Lyle stops the machine and dials down probably 3/4" deep and sets the step over for .060 thou and places the shield in front of the clapper box.

I found out what the shield was for after the third or fourth TINK!

I think you could've killed folks at forty paces with those chips.

Yup, we used 4'x 8' sheets of 3/4" plywood for ours on the big planers. They had special holders for them made up out of steel tubing to hold them upright but pointed slightly toward the floor. 3 sheets on top of each other because the chips would eventually tear a hole through. Then you just scoot the whole thing a little so they hit another spot. Flip the board so the top is the bottom after a while. Rinse and repeat until there's no more board, then swap 'em out. Front board goes to the back, bang through the next one. When a chip from one of those big cuts hit the board it sounded about like somebody taking a full-power whack at the board with a 20-pound sledge. Imagine a car/truck coil spring shaped chip that weighed maybe 5-10 pounds easy being hurled off the end of the tool like a fastball pitch. I think the heaviest cuts I took on the planer were probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 3/4" depth and almost a 1/4" advance per stroke. I brought one of the chips in to my old high school machine shop teacher so he could show the kids. Don't know if they still have it, he retired long ago.

One of the owners of that shop was an old timer that had worked at Blaw-Knox, and I remember him telling me about a guy getting one of those flying planer chips right through the cheek that got stuck there, half in his mouth and half hanging out of his face. Yikes.

 

[sfriedberg]

In the "Bull of the Woods" era (1880-1930's), it was not unusual for 2nd or 3rd shift (i.e., not closely supervised) lathe operators to start a continuous curled chip and make it gradually snake down the aisle between machines. These would be jobs where a single cut might take 90 minutes (or longer): long large diameter shafts, turned at carbon steel tool speeds. Tightly curled (like drill swarf), they'd get chips 20-50 feet long. If you could stretch out the chip without breaking it, it would be 10x that long, or greater.

 

[john.k]

The "Cincinnatti Planers" book has pics of some massive chips......I suspect biggest chips would be cutting rail down for switches and turnouts......quite a regular job too,as the thin edge gets chopped up quickly.....I know the big Butler planer at the Westinghouse railtrack factory at Toombul had a table big enough to park a semitrailer on,it was scrapped when the factory closed .

 

[john.k]

I used to get tangled bundles off 4140 ,no matter what I did .....iinserts with chip breakers just didnt work,still get huge tangle that has to be pulled out with a boat hook........one time I had bundles on the floor ,pulling a bundle out from the tray,when it all wrapped up ,and pulled a carelessly placed extension lead into the mess and wound it up ,it was live too.

 

[yardbird]

When I first got started I accidentally run a 1/4" radius tool in the face of a part. Stopped the spindle dead on a J&L machine with a 24" chuck. I've kept this in my box over 30 years.

Brent

 

[mark costello]

Where's Forrest when We need Him?

 

[paulz]

No idea when where, or how. Came across it and thought it too cool to not save.