Walter hosts online press conference about new milling cutter

To promote the new Xtra·tec S3 milling cutter series, Phillip Smith, product manager rotating indexable at Walter AG, who’s based in Canada, presented a digital press conference April 22. Walter USA LLC is located in Greer, South Carolina.

The toolmaker reports that the milling tool series was introduced to address numerous market demands, including greater cutting depths, higher feed rates and maximum stability — even under difficult cutting conditions or with unstable workpieces. End users also want tools to overcome or minimize ineffective coolant application, scrap, reduced tool life and machine downtime.

According to the company, the name S3 stands for the line’s three core advantages: stability, supply and Selection. As the first tool in the series, the new M6420 high-feed milling cutter meets these requirements. Its innovative, patent-pending new chip space design enables reliable chip evacuation even with high chip volumes. This allows large amounts of chips to be safely evacuated, particularly when roughing a wide variety of ISO materials.

The stability of the new series is reportedly achieved through a patent-pending, vibration-damping chip-flute design. The cutter body itself has up to 30 percent higher rigidity, according to finite element method analysis, which in turn extends tool life. High cutting forces acting on the cutter body, particularly during high-feed milling strategies, are effectively minimized.

Another decisive factor for the performance and long tool life is the optimized coolant supply. With up to three coolant channels per insert seat, the milling cutter makes maximum use of the coolant volume available from the machine without any loss of pressure. The targeted supply increases the coolant volume by 48 percent, which lowers the temperature at the cutting edge while ensuring efficient chip removal, especially at high feed rates and large cutting depths.

To simplify handling in everyday production, Walter says it relies on a user-friendly, intuitive selection system for the S3 series based on a self-explanatory nomenclature of insert geometries: L5 equals light-cutting geometry, M5 equals medium geometry and R5 equals roughing geometry. The easy identification via the initial letters improves handling.