Originally Posted by cnc@52  glovebox20,
What about 40 or 50 taper? A few large steel parts but mostly aluminum castings. |
My shop primary runs 40 taper mills although we do have have one mill with a 50 taper. 40 taper are nice because the tool are light and easy to load in the machine, don't take a lot of bench space to store them and cheap compared to 50 tapper tooling. Also, 40 tapers generaly have a lot more RPM's to them.
But if money wasnt a issue, and you can find a 50 taper that is fast enough, I'll go with the 50 taper in a heart beat. Tool life will be much better, take deeper cuts, cut faster, and more Rigid. If your using a lot of 3/4 end mills or 3" face mills, and/or long tools, I would definaly think about the 50 taper. The 50 taper mill broke down on us one time so we had to run that job on a 40 taper mill and I was a pain in the butt!! The 40 taper did ok for the most part, but we had a insert 1.25 dia. 10* end mill we had to use on the part (4140 forging) and instead of taking it in one pass, We had to do it in two and The finish and tool life wasn't all that great.
That's my thoughs
glovebox20