Insert on stainless steel and titanium

[schmitty9]

When using inserts most commonly sandvik our programming dept uses coolant on everything. I don't have extensive experience but from what I've seen it doesn't appear that coolant helps in fact it decreases tool life? Is this true and is there a rule of thumb for inserts on certain materials and dry and wet machining? I tripled the insert life on one 40 rockwell heat treated steel job by turning coolant off and using air blast can this be done across the board?

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[christinandavid]

Running dry can certainly improve insert life if you are doing a lot of intermittent cutting with poor coolant flow.

Coolant, especially thru tool, I would still be inclined to use when lingering over a small area - helical bore milling, for example.

The trick to dry machining is to have a rigid enough set-up to be able to run the insert/tool at the optimum metal removal rate. This will help keep everything from getting too hot.



As I work on large, flimsy castings which can vary in quality, inclusions and hard skin are my main ball-ache so I tend to run with coolant - if all the tips go without warning I seem to have a few more nano-seconds of grace to save the tool body itself...

DP

[Shane123]

with our sandvik inserts, i ran into the same issue on stainless, was shocking the inserts and killing them. Tried different grades till i found the 1125 grade, running them dry and getting the feed up really prolonged tool life like you wouldn't believe. Especially on the lathe doing stainless 2.5" square bar. Went from a corner every 3-5 parts (bearing turn downs- making shafts) to holding a corner for over 90 parts easily on that interrupted cut part.