Newbie- the best way to machine iron castings

[vertix19]

hello every body i was wandering if someone with experience machining casting in cnc can give some advice about drilling and hard milling, castings like iron and stainless steal, should one use coolant or not or what kind of insert? any help will be greatly appreciated. thank you very much

[kling8]

i'd say you want to use coolant for sure, as far as the type of insert, there are a ton of them out there, in a tooling catalog they do a pretty good job of describing the application for the various inserts. type of metal machining, if your slotting, plunging, pockets, profile, general purpose, all things to consider when trying to find the right insert. and a lot of times you pay for cheap tools are usually just that.

[Boots]

Cast Iron and Stainless take different types of inserts. I used to use Ceramic inserts on cast Iron (milling) with NO COOLENT. But you can't let your parts get too hot as they will be out of tollerance. Ceramic Inserts don't do well against Cast Stainless. If you contact a sales rep. he will come to your shop and help you figure out just what you need. Save yourself all the headachs and let them do it.