2-Minute Milling Success Stories
At Dapra, our relationship with shops large and small doesn’t start and end with a purchase order. We’re here to help you choose the best tooling, inserts and operating parameters to maximize your milling efficiency and productivity – every step of the way, from sale to the spindle.
Every day, we work side-by-side with our customers to determine the best approach for their milling applications. This series of quick videos looks at a variety of scenarios where we helped shops save time and money by dialing in their operation.
Heavy-Feed Material Removal from Uddeholm Unimax Steel
This shop had to remove .600" material on several 4.5" x 12" blocks of high-hardness Uddeholm Unimax steel with a 40-taper machine. A 2" heavy-feed cutter allowed for very aggressive metal removal in tandem with the machine's Big-Plus spindle, paving the way for sub-2-minute cycle times.
High-Feed Machining of Hot-Rolled Steel Parts
This application required a significant amount of material removal from several large hot-rolled steel parts. We found the sweet spot where a 4" dia. high-feed cutter could work at a spindle load percentage that the machine could handle long-term, resulting in a 50% improvement in cycle time and smooth cuts across the workpiece.
Making Large-Diameter Holes Crazy Fast in 4140PH
High-feed helixing can shorten cycle times for large-diameter hole making to never-before-seen levels – even on a 40-taper machine.
In this customer application, our high-feed milling cutter makes quick work of a 4" diameter, 2.5" deep hole in 4140PH.
Unattended High-Feed Milling to Repurpose a Forge Die – Finkl FX2 Hammered Steel
This shop needed to mill a large, 4.5" deep pocket in an old forge die block of FX2 to prepare the workpiece for a new insert – a process that traditionally took them up to 10 hours per part using button cutters.
Using our 2" heavy-feed cutter, we reduced the cycle time down to 3.5 hours, even while running conservatively to allow for unattended operation. The annual cost savings from this tooling change could be well into the 6 figures, and the impressive jump in throughput allowed the shop to keep up with demand without adding machines to its operation.
High-Feed Roughing 17-4 PH Stainless on a 40-Taper Machine
For this application, a customer required extensive roughing of 17-4 PH stainless steel on their 40-taper Haas machining center.
With its light depth of cut a quick feed rate, our 2" mini-feed high-feed cutter was a perfect fit, achieving more than 90 minutes of tool life, with machine loads well within normal.
Hard Milling Toolox 44 (45 Rc) with a High-Feed Cutter
A customer called looking for assistance roughing a lot of material from a Toolox 44 block at 45 Rc. Our recommendation was a heavy-feed cutter using RF-12 inserts.
Wanting to stay conservative since it was an unattended run, we set the customer up at 350 SFM, .030" FPT and .035" DOC. After 90 successful minutes of cutting, the inserts still looked good!
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