Talking to a mold maker changed how I look at my tool paths

I was at a job shop in Detroit a few weeks ago and this old guy who makes injection molds watched me run a part. He said I was wasting time with constant finish passes because my roughing was too conservative. I thought I was being safe, but he showed me how to take a .03 cut deeper and skip every other pass. It cut my cycle time by almost 40 percent on that aluminum plate. Has anyone else had a seasoned machinist call out something you thought was standard?

2 comments

2 Comments

averywright29d ago

That old timer was definitely onto something. A lot of us get stuck in "safe" feeds and speeds because we're scared of chatter or breaking an endmill, but sometimes you gotta trust what the tool can actually handle.

finleyl5529d ago

3 thou rpm on a 1/4 endmill in 6061. People lose their mind when I say that. But with proper chip thinning it runs fine. The old guys just knew how to read the machine noise and adjust on the fly.