Milling chamfers on lathe - Angled driven tool holders

Schjell · Aug 17, 2020

Hi,
I'm making a series of turned parts that have a patterned chamfered feature.
Due to the fact that I've only got straight axial and radial live tool holders; milling this chamfer essentially becomes a little elegant and time consuming operation with a million step-downs to get a relatively smooth surface. I've been looking a bit on a few adjustable angle live tool holders, but I'm weary of stepping down to an ER20 or ER16 size collet. It would however obviously reduce my machining time drastically and improve the surface finish.
Anyone here with experience using these adjustable holders? Haven't got a quote yet - I presume they cost an arm and a leg. Any manufacturer recommendations would be most welcome as well.

I've got a Haas ST-30Y with a BMT65 turret.

Thanks again!

PS: Making sensible adaptive milling tool paths in "Inventor CAM" really is doing my head in. Will probably have a rant about that in the CAM section.

sirAIG · Aug 17, 2020

Are you currently using a chamfer tool? Or stepping down a ball mill? Why not use a chamfer tool via axial live tool (or radial feature dependent}

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Schjell · Aug 17, 2020

Hi,
I've been looking for good chamfered tooling, only got ball mills and end mills for the moment. I've got a lot of Kenna tooling, was surprised when I couldn't find any chambered mills in their catalogue. Seen a lot of "cheap" chamfered tooling, so hoping to come across some good quality stuff here in Norway. It's prob available, but I'm still a rookie in terms of serious machining.

lumley32 · Aug 18, 2020

Wnt 50 944 100

vr6 · Aug 18, 2020

what size of a tool do you think you want? i am sure i can come with something for a suggestion

Schjell · Aug 18, 2020

Thanks for the tip!
I just ended up spending a wad of cash today on an angled holder (settable 0-90 deg w/digital readout).
I came to the conclusion that it's going to be the most efficient way to go since I can use my flat end mills. Useful if I need to drill some angled holes as well.
Will share some experiences once I've got my hands on it and used it. It's a good hack when occasionally needing that 5th axis.

litlerob1 · Aug 19, 2020

I don't understand.

Are you Chamfering features on the OD of a part, like Bosses? Why do you need special anything?

You have front facing tool holders and OD tool holders, right?

Having an adjustable angle tool holder, a B-Axis machine does not make.

R

Mike1974 · Aug 19, 2020

I'm confused as well. Maybe OP is milling a square or rectangular shape on the face and wants to chamfer it... but then a regular chamfer mill would do that?

The old saying a picture is worth a thousand words. :willy_nilly:

Schjell · Aug 19, 2020

Apologies, not the best picture, but hope you can see the features I'm talking about. They can be made axially or radially, but thought it would be more efficient to come in with an end mill with orientation parallel to the chamfer. My inventor CAM offers little detailed control of the tool path, in fact it generates different tool paths for each of the four features even though they are identical. Note that the geometry on this particular feature is not a clean chamfer, it's got some varying fillets as well.

Sidenote: Currently I've got three Axial live tools. For this op I use one for drilling hole for tapping, one for tapping and the third for a 20mm end mill. A fourth will be handy in any case for cleaning up with a small ball mill, angled or not.

litlerob1 · Aug 19, 2020

You need better software. Sorry.

I'd use a regular Chamfer Tool, big enough to deal with your largest chamfer. Then effect it that way.

R

Schjell · Aug 20, 2020

litlerob1 said:
You need better software. Sorry.

I'd use a regular Chamfer Tool, big enough to deal with your largest chamfer. Then effect it that way.

R

I agree with that Rob. Inventor CAM is usually OK, but if I spent most of my time milling and not turning then I would get something better. Still fascinated by how the CAM takes something really simple like that milling and turns it into tens of thousands lines of code. Would be better if I programmed that bit by hand, but then it won't handle later revisions. At least the generated code for turning and typical drill/tap stuff is clean.

gregormarwick · Aug 20, 2020

I have an adjustable angle holder that I use (infrequently now that we have a B axis machine) on our Doosan. It's a Mimatic. The output is ER16 and the spindle is tiny, but it let me do a lot of parts in one cycle that I'd not have been able to do otherwise. Because of the small output spindle I didn't do too much milling with it, mainly drilling and tapping, but it works fine for light milling. It would work great for the feature in your picture.

Schjell · Aug 20, 2020

gregormarwick said:
I have an adjustable angle holder that I use (infrequently now that we have a B axis machine) on our Doosan. It's a Mimatic. The output is ER16 and the spindle is tiny, but it let me do a lot of parts in one cycle that I'd not have been able to do otherwise. Because of the small output spindle I didn't do too much milling with it, mainly drilling and tapping, but it works fine for light milling. It would work great for the feature in your picture.

Thanks a lot Gregor, that sounds promising. The one I ordered has an ER25 so hopefully it will be sturdy enough for the things you mentioned. I totally agree with not using heavily. Fortunately about 75% of the parts we make are in POM-C.

AARONT · Aug 20, 2020

Curious. Why not just use a slotting cutter?

litlerob1 · Aug 20, 2020

Schjell said:
I agree with that Rob. Inventor CAM is usually OK, but if I spent most of my time milling and not turning then I would get something better. Still fascinated by how the CAM takes something really simple like that milling and turns it into tens of thousands lines of code. Would be better if I programmed that bit by hand, but then it won't handle later revisions. At least the generated code for turning and typical drill/tap stuff is clean.

FingerCam.

It's not hard.

TeachMePlease · Aug 20, 2020

Ok...

What am I missing?

Why are you not just using a chamfer mill?

Delw · Aug 20, 2020

TeachMePlease said:
Ok...

What am I missing?

Why are you not just using a chamfer mill?

I believe he is talking about this feature here in the pic I marked up. basically its a surfacing feature. dont know what his specs are in the fillets.

litlerob1 · Aug 20, 2020

Delw said:
I believe he is talking about this feature here in the pic I marked up. basically its a surfacing feature. dont know what his specs are in the fillets.]

Ahhhh, that makes more sense.

gregormarwick · Aug 20, 2020

litlerob1 said:
I'd use a regular Chamfer Tool, big enough to deal with your largest chamfer. Then effect it that way.

TeachMePlease said:
What am I missing?

Why are you not just using a chamfer mill?

No way to fully generate that feature with a chamfer mill in 4 axis. It could be approximated, but it would not be significantly quicker or better than OP's current method.

AARONT said:
Curious. Why not just use a slotting cutter?

Judging the size of the part from the photo, a slotting cutter would require a much larger Y axis than OP likely has.

Schjell · Aug 20, 2020

gregormarwick said:
No way to fully generate that feature with a chamfer mill in 4 axis. It could be approximated, but it would not be significantly quicker or better than OP's current method.

Judging the size of the part from the photo, a slotting cutter would require a much larger Y axis than OP likely has.

Hi again,
A slotting cutter might have worked, have to give that one a good think. It's the next thing on the list, been checking out the Iscar site.
Anyways, that's the 32 parts done, but will def. try to improve the process next time around. Still a newbie, but learning every day and I love my job. Think my next machine will be without a turret full of conflicts though&#55357;&#56834;. Half the time is spent reorganizing the holders. Couldn't afford or justify a Mazak, but one day..

Again, as always, thanks for all the input guys, really appreciate it.

Milling chamfers on lathe - Angled driven tool holders

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