Steady in the pocket: Drilling Performance

END USER: Venture Machine & Tool Inc., (608) 783-8114, www.vmtooling.com.
CHALLENGE: Eliminate premature insert breakage and premature wear when facemilling.
SOLUTION: A facemill body with pockets that accurately seat inserts.
SOLUTION PROVIDERS: A-Line Machine Tool Co., (608) 785-1515, www.alinetools.com; Toolmex Industrial Solutions, (800) 992-4766, www.toolmex.com.

Facemills take a lot of abuse when machining the tool steels, cast iron, prehardened 4140 steel and other metals Venture Machine & Tool Inc. uses to make its progressive dies, draw dies and stamping dies. The Onalaska, Wis., company is also a stamping house, using what it machines to run production for many customers.

Similar to the additional pain a quarterback endures when his team has a weak offensive line, the abuse is amplified when the carbide inserts do not sit securely in the pockets of the cutter body. Brian Atkinson, toolroom machinist for the tool and die shop, noted Venture was experiencing a significant amount of insert breakage and premature wear with facemills that allowed the inserts to reposition themselves in the pockets. In one 4 “-dia. facemill that accepted eight inserts, for example, that movement caused two inserts to sit farther out than the others, so the tool only used two cutting edges instead of eight and those two inserts were constantly breaking, he added.

Courtesy of Toolmex Industrial Solutions

Palbit by Toolmex nickel-plated SNH facemills accept double-sided inserts with eight 45° cutting edges.

“You’re not getting the same chip load per insert because you don’t have a positive way to locate the insert in the cutter body,” Atkinson said. “It’s just a bad design. We would also have problems with surface finish, and it’s not good for the machine.”