Additions to OptiMill Milling Cutter Line

Additions to OptiMill Milling Cutter Line

With trochoidal milling, significant improvements in terms of tool costs, clamping, processing times and load on the machine components can be achieved in many applications compared to conventional milling. For this milling technique, MAPAL has expanded its OptiMill product range by adding mills for the machining of titanium and high-alloy steels, as well as for hard machining.

April 8, 2016

With trochoidal milling, significant improvements in terms of tool costs, clamping, processing times and load on the machine components can be achieved in many applications compared to conventional milling. For this milling technique, MAPAL has expanded its OptiMill product range by adding mills for the machining of titanium and high-alloy steels, as well as for hard machining.

As a result, new fields of application have been developed, such as structural components. A specially engineered, extremely unequal positioning of the five cutting edges in combination with an innovative geometric layout of the cutting wedge reduces vibrations. Counterbalancing conducted during the manufacturing process (balancing grade 2.5) lowers the risk of vibrations even further. As a result, the milling cutters of the OptiMill family can be used without problems even at high speeds.

To avoid the jamming, which results from the long chips produced through the sizable DOC, a chipbreaker is integrated, which divides the chips in half. This ensures the problem-free removal of the chips from the working space of the machine. All OptiMill milling cutters for trochoidal milling have a cutting edge length of 3 times diameter.

Glossary terms in this article

  • counterbalancing
    Use of weights or mechanisms to balance a workpiece, grinding wheel, rotating tool or other device. Minimizes machining vibration and maximizes cutting force.
  • milling cutter
    Loosely, any milling tool. Horizontal cutters take the form of plain milling cutters, plain spiral-tooth cutters, helical cutters, side-milling cutters, staggered-tooth side-millin…
  • alloy steels
    Steel containing specified quantities of alloying elements (other than carbon and the commonly accepted amounts of manganese, sulfur and phosphorus) added to cause changes in the m…
  • chipbreaker
    Groove or other tool geometry that breaks chips into small fragments as they come off the workpiece. Designed to prevent chips from becoming so long that they are difficult to cont…