Best Resource for Feeds and Speeds?

[jheal]

Hi everybody.
I was wondering if anybody knows of/ has a good resource for calculating feeds and speeds for General CNC Machining (Mostly lathe, Mill would be good as well though).
I usually try the tool manufacturers recommended speeds and feeds, but there are 2 problems. First the books are nearly impossible to read or figure out, second off the values are all maximized to give you an insert life of about 15 minutes. Dont know about you guys, but that isnt quite enough.
Just interested to see how everybody calculates good feeds and speeds.

Thanks
Jordan

[CNC Lurker]

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[Delw]

for cnc lathes inserts, and endmills on cnc mills I use quality machine tools and quality machines and the feeds and speeds are generally very close to what the manufacturer reccomends. The manufactuer reccomended speed and feeds are for optimal set ups. start 10% lower on speeds and play with the feeds.


if your running exotic materials or sometypes of stainless, sometimes they need to be tweeked but not always.

what type of material are you running? what type of machines are you using?
for hand machines its a pretty different ball game and you need to reduce usually by 20%.
the best way on hand machines is experiance and watching chip color and chip formation.

speeds and feeds are directly associated with the way you set up your machine, the rigidity of the tooling and the part, useing the right tool holder for the job( ie rigidty)

Sandvik, iscar, kenmetal and a few others are pretty much dead nuts on there speeds and fees, wanna be tools that come from china and a few other countries that blow inserts out cheap, that they sell too look like or mimic quality cutting tools do just that Mimic them cutting air only, once they hit a chunk of metal there gone.

do you have some examples of the type of material your cutting? is the inserts used for roughing or finishing?



also on some materials 15 mins of cutting time may be all you can get out of quality inserts. for example interupted cuts on nickle alloys,( thats why we always save our finishing inserts and use them as roughers) Sharp edges on nickle alloys will hurt inserts as well, there are ways to do this efficiently.

a quick way to check if your going to fast is, if your inserts are burning ( shooting fire on the tip and not making chips) your SFM or RPM is too high.

A little more info on your part would help guys on here figure out your problem.