Heat Treating O1 tool steel 4

[surfdog]

We have a job at work that requires HT of 01 tool steel to about 45Rc. Any ideas on what it will do while heat treated...bend, distort, shrink, expand the part is about 3.00" long, .500" wide and .250" thick with a slot in the center (.562 long & all the way through) and a "leg" or "step" milled into one end....it's in the annealed condition now..

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[jbel]

If you are doing this on a CNC machining center you may want to consider milling the part in an already hardened state.

We mill 45 Rc H-13 every day. The use of a CAM system and high speed machining principles will make the job much easier.

If this is not possible it would be worth your while to talk to you heat treater and get their opinion about how the part will move.

 

[surfdog]

jbel,

What are you using for tooling?....we've done some hard machining but not too much. I'm using Tek-Soft CAD/CAM and a Matsuura RAIII for the job. We machine 95% then HT and grind before plating. I'm assuming you mean light DOC and fast feeds when you say high speed principles. I've seen HSM before but only as a demo. How is tool life? What kind od machine are you running. We have 8000 rpm max spindle speed.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[jbel]

surfdog,

We have an OKK VM5 and with 20000 RPM and several Cincinnati Sabre's with 8000 RPM.

On the OKK we usually rough with SGS Turbocarb 3/8 TiAlN ball mills. 11000 RPM 100 IPM .050" DOC and .050" stepover.

For 1/4" TiAlN SGS ball mills we will run at 13000 RPM 120 IPM .050 DOC and .050 stepover.

Also, all of this is dry cutting. DO NOT use coolant. Just a good air blast to get the chips out of there.

OSG makes a great laminated chart with all the cutting condition information on it, so I just pull my numbers off that chart.

On the Cincinnatis the spindle speed max out at 8000 PRM so we just recalculate the feedrate from there according to the preceeding chipload per tooth. The depths of cut and stepover stay the same.

Any high quality cutting tool manufacturer can give you tons of help with this kind of information.

OSG seems to be a little cheaper than SGS and I think the quality is the same so you may want to check them out also.

My latest find is feed mills made by Seco Carboloy. We have a 2.5" 5-insert shell mill. We tested it at 750 RPM .040" DOC and 150 IPM feedrate. That is not a typo it ran well at 150 IPM in 45 Rc H-13. In production we run it at 750 RPM .040" DOC and 75 IPM feedrate. The problem with these things is that when they fail they fail catastrophically. Read as 'red glowing hunk of metal that used to be a shell mill'.

We use MasterCam for CAM software and I really like the control it gives the programmer. Always remember to ramp into pockets when you are machining like this. I think the Tek-Soft gives the same control but I am not sure.

Good Luck and post back with any other questions!!!!!

 

[surfdog]

jbel,

Thanks for the info....I will consider HSM more in the future! Btw I gave you a star too!

Kevin