Keyway cutting in SL30

[Five-10]

Anyone here ever cut internal keyways in a part with their lathe? I just did 1000 of these alum castings it had a 1.000 bore with a .250 keyway 2.500 deep. I used a .250 highspeed steel toolbit in a holder I made. It worked perfectly. When the job was running I had a Haas tech in here working on my VF6SS and I showed him the keyway cutting operation and he said it was hard on the spindle bearings. Now I just got a job that is CRS It is a 1.437 bore with a .375 keyway 1.125 deep and I wondered if anyone else did steel sucessfully.

[WITOMCIO]

See if that could help
http://www.eltool.com/how.asp
Never used it myself ,but it could work for you.

[WOLOG]

PH Horn makes a cool keyway cutter for lathe ops.

http://www.hornusa.com/eng/service/p...6US-IMTS-1.pdf

[wsteve]

I have done several jobs on a VF2 & VF3 using the same principal as what your doing. My guess would be that your inducing much less stress on the bearings than you would be when your are pushing a large drill or taking a heavy cut turning. The only difference being that the spindle is stationary but with that being said the load on the bearings should be the same. Most likely you would stall your servo motor before you hurt your bearings.

[Five-10]

Yeah I do the keyway cutting alot in the mills too. I have never done keyways in anything other than aluminum and never larger than .250 wide. Have you ever done .375 wide in steel?. If so how many thousandths do you take per stroke? I've been doing .005" per stroke at 200IPM in alum. takes about a minute.

[wsteve]

I think you would be okay increasing your depth to about .01 (in aluminum or mild steel) and decrease as you get close to your size to accomodate for for any push off. I've have even done this in 316 I just didn't get very good tool life. At no time did I feel that I was hurting the machine nor did I ever stall a servo. I've cut up to 1/2" keys in brass and mild steel with good results.