Recommendations For Cast Iron Tooling

[701309CAM]

Hello all,

TL;DR: I'm wondering if you all could provide some insight on your preferred tooling standards for working with cast materials.

I've recently taken a position at a production machine shop working primarily with cast gray iron and ductile iron. When I talked with the other CAM programmer, I learned that despite (and possibly because) we have hundreds of endmills in the tool crib we have no CAM tool library in Fusion360. Every part is set up with data-less tooling, and the feeds and speeds are manually added.

As I go through our tool cabinets, I'm overwhelmed by the tooling options we have collected over time, and most of it has come from tooling vendors taking us to the bank. The most frustrating part is that most setup sheets from the past few decades don't specify anything other than tool diameter and minimum length, leaving it up to the operators to make the right choice when replacing tools. I'd like to make this an easier process for the programmers, the tool crib attendant, and our machinists.

Previously I worked in a shop that ran the same standard Garr endmills for aluminum, and a coated version for steel in all their machines. Doing this kept the programmers efficient, and the machinists on task. My goal at my new job is to create a standard body of tools that are used for the majority of the cutting and utilize special tooling when specific corner radii is called out, or a deep pocket requires machining.

Our current inventory is made up of tools from AB Tools, Accupro, County Line Tool, Fullerton, Garr, Gorilla Mill, Guhring, Hanita, Harvey, Kennametal, Monster Tool, Niagara, OSG, Sandvik, Seco, SGS, Swift-Carb, and Widia. I have a personal preference for Garr, but there is no specific reason for this.

I'm wondering if you all could provide some insight on your preferred tooling standards for working with cast materials. I'm trying not to deal with salespeople until I know what I want.

 

[MCritchley]

Ask the guys you’re programing the parts for. Take a consensus and make that the standard.
They know what works the best.

 

[dandrummerman21]

I don't do cast iron enough to weigh in on cast specific tooling, but I would suggest to you that, in general, carbide is carbide, HSS is HSS, Cobalt/hsse is cobalt/hsse, etc. Coatings are coatings. blah blah.

What do I mean by that? Generally (and I do mean very generally, as there are SOMETIMES large tool differences) you'll use the speeds and feeds no matter the manufacturer, given that the tools you have to choose from have the same features.


So, a standard 1" long 1/2" 4 flute coated endmill, no matter the manufacturer, will have a certain range of speeds and feeds. I've seen lots of speeds and feed charts for various manufacturers. They are not all very far off from each other when doing specific tasks, such as plain old endmilling.

You generally have the same when you step up to variable flute endmills, 6+ flute endmills, etc. They are all "the same". Yes, some will seem to last better than others, some have better grinds, etc. But you would program them the same as each other if you specify that type of tool.


So what you start doing is specifying "6 flute, 1.25" length, variable helix, altin coated" in your program/setup, and thats what they should grab. Nothing else. If you have 10 different brands, maybe someone should note which ones actually last better. Then when you start buying more tooling, stick to one or 2 manufacturers of tooling, so you get that predictability and standard tooling list that you're looking for.



Are you suggesting that on a certain job, an operator might pick carbide, and on another instance of the same setup, someone might pick out a cobalt tool, and speeds and feeds would be changed/added at the machine at the time of setup? That's annoying.

 

[701309CAM]

I don't do cast iron enough to weigh in on cast specific tooling, but I would suggest to you that, in general, carbide is carbide, HSS is HSS, Cobalt/hsse is cobalt/hsse, etc. Coatings are coatings. blah blah.

What do I mean by that? Generally (and I do mean very generally, as there are SOMETIMES large tool differences) you'll use the speeds and feeds no matter the manufacturer, given that the tools you have to choose from have the same features.


So, a standard 1" long 1/2" 4 flute coated endmill, no matter the manufacturer, will have a certain range of speeds and feeds. I've seen lots of speeds and feed charts for various manufacturers. They are not all very far off from each other when doing specific tasks, such as plain old endmilling.

You generally have the same when you step up to variable flute endmills, 6+ flute endmills, etc. They are all "the same". Yes, some will seem to last better than others, some have better grinds, etc. But you would program them the same as each other if you specify that type of tool.


So what you start doing is specifying "6 flute, 1.25" length, variable helix, altin coated" in your program/setup, and thats what they should grab. Nothing else. If you have 10 different brands, maybe someone should note which ones actually last better. Then when you start buying more tooling, stick to one or 2 manufacturers of tooling, so you get that predictability and standard tooling list that you're looking for.



Are you suggesting that on a certain job, an operator might pick carbide, and on another instance of the same setup, someone might pick out a cobalt tool, and speeds and feeds would be changed/added at the machine at the time of setup? That's annoying.

Thanks for the reply, drummerman. You got it right-- they leave it up to the operator to pick their tool and then adjust their feeds and speeds over their first few pieces. My primary goal is to create foolproof programs and setups so that anybody can be handed a setup sheet and run without a problem.

Thank you for your input on tooling. We have some tooling that is pretty goofy, but like I said, it's not necessary for the bulk of our jobs. What I'll do moving forward is keep a list of standard tools used in my own programs and then work on making it the standard for repeat jobs when possible.

 

[alphonso]

"Foolproof" Good luck with that.