Watch Solutions For Hard Milling This MMS inMotion presentation from Makino demonstrates the latest techniques and technologies for high-speed machining of hardened materials for die or mold applications. Check out tips, tricks, and new technologies you can use to mill the toughest steels, shortening your lead times, lowering your costs, and eliminating bench work.
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This die punch is at a hardness of 62 Rockwell. The material is A2, so it is a die type material. The cutter that we are using is a Hitachi TH coated. The cutter is a 12 millimeter diameter. It is a flat, six fluted cutter. The 45 degree angle on it is why the chips are coming off and looking the way that they look as they are flying off.

As the chips fly off they have the look of aluminum or a softer material because of the speed and amount of material removed per flute. The rpm in this case is 3,200 hundred rpm. The feedrate that we are cutting at is 1,600 millimeters a minute or 63 inches per minutes. Our radial depth of cut is 0.1 millimeters or four thou radial step over. The axial depth of cut is 25 millimeters or about one inch.

You can see we are really baring this tool down along the profile and collapsing on the part as we go along. The chip load for this particular cutter is 83 microns. This is a six footed cutter so each tooth is actually taking three thou of stock per advancement.

The total cycle time to rough this part was 21 minutes. The reason we picked this type of profile or this type of pass to rough is because the geometry would allow it. This part is tall has some free flowing shapes as it collapses. This approach is very effective way to rough this hard material. It allows for a consistent chip load and a consistent cut. Here we are starting from the outside of the part and collapsing in on the part as we cut. We are just profiling from the outside in.