Titanium Machining

[cncswiss1]

I cut Ti every day in my job making medical implants.. and it is not that bad. use ample coolant (striaght oil or really thick water based ) and use carbide tooling, for milling start at about 135 sfm (drilling at 75 sfm) and in the 1/4 TO 1/2 endmill range try .001 to .005 per flute feedrate for starters.. adjust according to the sound, if in doubt feed harder.. quality carbide endmills are a must, SGS,mitsubishi,iscar,greenfield,osg, etc.. TiAlN coating is ok for higher speed work (500 sfm high speed machining) just plain TiN coating is fine for finishing.. some folks say coating is bad and it makes the edge duller, and i agree partially, i avopid CVD coatings and dtick with the PVD (vapor deposit) coatings, most everytihing nowdays is CVD anyway. get a 1/2 SGS Z carb spin it 1000 RPM and try to break it with heavy feed.. grade 5 is a very soft Ti as far as Ti goes, it may not make the best bashing instrument and will be ahrder to machine than other grades (very gummy) you will see some chip welding if the coolant flush is not good.

if you can get some Ti 6Al4V it will be a better blunt force tool, and a heck of a lot easier to machine.

oh yea Ti flexes a lot you will need multiple spring passes for a fine finish and better tolerance holding. to that end it likes to eat taps, drill a little bigger than stated in the book (+10-15%) for any given tap size and you will have better luck.

apologies for any grammer errors international keyboards are funky to a redneck.¿

[APP]

Grade 5 is 6al4v, or grade 23. The only difference is grade 23 has less oxygen.


I think you will be better off making your weapon out of steel.