Face Mills

[upnorth]

I'm looking to do an upgrade here. I'm currently doing the facing operations with an end mill. I do have a fly cutter but an wanting something that is a bit faster for facing down to size. Is anyone using anything they would recommend? Not looking for a $500 Iscar but something reasonable. 1.5" diameter would be ok. 2.5" diameter would be ideal.

For those that have them what are you running them at? RPM, Width of cut and depth of cut.

Thanks for any replies.

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[metalmayhem]

I use the cheap apmt/apkt 50mm face mills from ebay and they work well . Many of the sellers sell aluminum inserts for the same mills which are very sharp , sharp enough to cut my fingers a few times while doing tool changes . The inserts are 10-15 bucks per pack vs 15+ per insert , and I've just recently indexed a few inserts after 2.5 yrs of cutting thousands of parts .

There can be a slight height difference between inserts so a bit of shimming may be desirable but nothing worse than I've seen on higher end face mills .

As far as aluminum cuts , 50% engagement 6000rpm 20-50ipm easily .01-.02 depth of cut ,( 4 inserts )

[mklotz70]

I put most of my info in videos.

I'm pretty sure the sources and numbers are in this vid.



I don't think I have the cut specs listed, but I typically run it at 3500rpms, .100"-ish doc, .002-.003 IPT


This vid is just a typical issue with cutting down the carrier on OP2. I now do a profile around the part with a shear hog instead of the cob cutter shown in the second half.

Not that you asked about the profile cutting, but this vid shows what I was just referring to and uses the shear hog. Doing a profile cut like this saves a ton of potential grief from trying to remove the carrier with a face mill or fly cutter.

[CL_MotoTech]

I'm on a G0704. I like a 2" round insert face mill that I got on eBay. It has "Mitsubishi" round inserts (I'm not sure if they are real or not). I run it at like 30% step over and .02" deep. I like to go pretty slow, maybe like 20ipm and 3k rpm, I could double that or more probably... I've honestly never checked out the F&S with a calculator, I should do that... The chips just spray off the thing, it's a lot of fun really. That said, it's not really removing a lot of volume. The surface finish can be really quite fine when slowed down.

[metalmayhem]

button inserts (round) are the best for getting a mirror finish . I prefer the 90 degree over button or 45 deg on light machines only because of the load , a 90 will take less power under the same speeds and feeds . The difference probably won't be a big deal on the torus but it likely would have an impact on my 440's , but , I've been thinking about getting some button mills to try out
I don't like all the coolant in the air in my garage when all 4 mills are facing so I run them dry , they never gum up and the finish is always nice

[upnorth]

Thanks for the replies I'll be making a purchase soon.

[metalmayhem]

your thread got me thinking about my own set up . The current mills sound sweet at 6000rpm but at 10000 there is a bit of vibration at start up (air cut) , and maybe it's just more noise than anything . After my last commend I bought a few of the aluminum face mill heads to see how they'll sound at 10k . I would never use something like that for steel but they should hold up for the light cuts on aluminum that I do

[deadlykitten]

hy, if possible & if you desire, consider crafting your own heads; coolant through / kindly

[upnorth]

hy, if possible & if you desire, consider crafting your own heads; coolant through / kindly

Not really worth it to make my own. I don't really have a good supply of scrap steel. Having it sent here would cost about the same as ordering in a finished unit from China.

Are you really in Antarctica? I spent some time down there.

[AUSTINMACHINING]

Don't have my Torus pro any more, but I was using a 2" ripper mill that is now on the Brother machine. Great tool for the price, extra inserts, designed specifically for aluminum. Beautiful finishes