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Facegrooving 1/16 dovetail o-ring seal in 316L

Hazzert

Stainless
Joined
Dec 21, 2014
I have in the neighbourhood of 10-20 of these grooves to do coming up by the end of March. Our shop has zero experience with this type of feature. The one positive (or negative?) is the dovetails are one sided not two as I have seen other people mention in my search here on PM. We've found a supplier for the tool at O-Ring Dovetail Groovers - Series 53 with our particular tool being the second from the top.

What is the typical approach for these features? I'm not well versed in face grooving of any style so I'm not sure if we perhaps should plunge rough the straight section with the tool and either contour out or if a -z, +x, -x, +z feed approach would be sufficient?

The features will also be cut on a flat bed lathe without a turett.

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
I don't see why what you are planning wouldn't work.

We have a Hardinge GT with a top plate. So my approach with it and the current tooling in our shop would be a rough cut with a sandvik turn and groove. Then a PH horn boring bar to cut out the dovetail part. The Sandvik T&G would probably need some custom grinding for relief in a homemade face grooving holder we have, it's a 1/2" square shank T&G holder cut off and welded to a 3/4" round shank to fit in the Hardinge top plate holder.
 
Honestly it's probably more nerves regarding the small tools than any other one thing. Knowing that these things are $50/ea plus exchange rate and down time doesn't help either. I'm still not sure on just how many of these tools we'll need.

I'd be very interested to hear people's experience with tool life on small form tools like these.
 
HAHA. try a pigeon toed groove on the OD, all three dimensions matching. :) The dovetail groove tool you posted should be just fine.


Robert
 
For vacuum service, on large diameters, I've always shut spindle power off and let the spindle coast to a stop as the final bottom cleanup cut was made. Somewhat of a knack.
That's on a manual, but it's tuff to get a sealing surface while the spindle is at speed.

YMMV..
 
How much confidence do you have in your setup or your set up guy? Will these be repeat parts?

If confidence is high and repeating the part in the near future is low, then just order one. At $50 a pop if lead time is close I would order 2, if a repeat order is a good possibility I would order three.

Our form tools usually last us a considerable number of parts but, there is always that possibility of a crash. Do you have a back up way of doing the feature? Something I learned from managing restaurants that very much applies in the machining industry is never letting a customer down. People talk about and remember bad expieriences much more than even excellent expieriences. Even if you have to lose money on a job it's cheaper than letting a customer down. What's this customer worth to you? We are a mid to large order swiss shop but, a few of our customers ask us for parts we can't run on our swiss machines. We do have a maual lathe and mill in our back room which are really only there to support our production machines. Sometimes we have some of our most expierienced guys back there running production just to please a customer. We aren't making anything off the job but, customer satisfaction is very important. Besides, do you want your customer to have to talk to another shop? That's the perfect opportunity for them to tell YOUR customer what other services they offer when all your customer really wants is no headaches and a problem free sourcing asset. Never telling a customer no will take you far in any industry.
 








 
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