High performance in a small package

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END USER: Precision Technologies Inc., (978) 649-8715, www.precision-techno.com. CHALLENGE: Boost feed rate when milling tiny slots. SOLUTION: Variable-helix miniature endmill. SOLUTION PROVIDERS: Harvey Tool Co. LLC, (800) 645-5609, www.harveytool.com.

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Precision Technologies Inc., Tyngsboro, Mass., provides machining and assembly services, as well as engineering consulting assistance to maximize the manufacturability of its customers’ parts. “A lot of times customers come to us if they have a part that nobody else can make correctly,” said Bill Goyer, general manager. “We help them with their problem.”

Precision Technologies continually seeks ways to reduce costs by shortening cycle times. A good example involved a medical component machined from 303 stainless steel. Precision Technologies sought to cut the part’s 90-minute machining time in half.

Courtesy of Harvey Tool

A 3⁄64 “-dia. variable-helix endmill from Harvey Tool enabled Precision Technologies to more than quadruple the feed rate and increase the axial DOC by 2.5 times when milling tiny slots in a stainless steel medical component.

Programmer Frank Rogier said he regularly gets tool application advice from Jim Childs, president of Industrial Tool Supply, Lowell, Mass., a distributor of cutting tools and other machining supplies. “I can show Jim an application and he gives me ideas on what tools to use,” Rogier said.

“All of our guys sell on the value added, technical end,” Childs said, adding that the staff continually receives training in new technologies and performs tool tests.

After reviewing the medical component job, Industrial Tool Supply specified tooling. “We helped them on the drilling, milling and facemilling,” Childs said. In analyzing the job, he said: “My approach was to start with the operation that was the longest, because speeding that up took off the most time. Then we just kept on going. [However] we got to a stumbling point with a tiny little tool.”