VIDEO: HOW TO Maximize Tooling Versatility

JACOB SANCHEZ: In today's manufacturing world, efficiency is king. We're always looking for ways to reduce our set-up times, to minimize cycle time so we can get parts out the door faster. But look, that's going to come with a lot of work. It's going to come with a lot of your time. And let me tell you, those machines out there and your shop, those carousels are going to be packed. You're going to have hundreds of tools scattered around your shop, all for different features, for tackling different materials, different parts. That's going to drive up some cost, especially if you're a small to medium sized business. So what can we do? What can we try to go after? We can try to figure out a way to do more with less. We can figure out how we can attack multiple operations with fewer tools. We can try to find a single cutter body and make it the multi-tasker in our shop. That's why I'm here at the MSC Machining Research Laboratory in partnership with the University of Tennessee’s Manufacturing and Design Enterprise (TN-MADE). And we have some metalworking experts in this house. Seco and the How To team. They're going to be helping all of us learn How To maximize tooling, versatility.

So this is Tennessee made, baby, I like it. Thanks for having me.

JOSHUA PENNEY, Ph.D.: Absolutely. We're glad you're here.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Give me the rundown on what this space is. Where are we at?

JOSHUA PENNEY, Ph.D.: Yeah, we're at the Tennessee Made, which is part of the Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing at the University of Tennessee. This whole place is all about innovation and working with industry to grow research that's been done at the university and put it out in the field. We want to get things that have been highly developed by our graduate students and our faculty into the hands of the job shops, so that they can improve their processes in the long run.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And how does this space interact with the industrial community, with those job shops? Are they allowed to come in here in any way or do they how do they interact with you?

JOSHUA PENNEY, Ph.D.: Yeah, there's a couple different ways they can interact with us. First is through research with faculty members. That's a really traditional way to work with us and the university. But we have a new way. And that's actually through co-locating with us here at Tennessee Made. We can work with you to have some square footage where you can either place a machine or part of a line or whatever you're working on, so that you don't have to shut down your production and you can mess around, try different things out, do some research. And then take that back to your job shop at the end of the day and implement it into your everyday workflow.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Yeah. Tyler, my brother in blue, the MSC crew. So what do you do here at Tennessee Made.

TYLER POON: Thanks, Jacob. Well, as MSC, Ross and I are here to represent our company, to really be the boots on the ground, to work on metalworking, research, testing and some technology development. You know, we want to cover the whole span from, every single one of our industrial partners like Seco. And we'll see some machining later on. But we want to make sure we bridge that connection between academia as well as research and what we can provide for our customers so they can optimize their processes and get to the solution that they need.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Nice. I'm excited to be a part of the crew. I'm excited to get to visit this facility. And mentioning Seco, I think I see him down there waiting for us. You guys mind if I go head down there and get to cutting?

JOSHUA PENNEY, Ph.D.: Head on!

JACOB SANCHEZ: All right, man, we got a lot of tools going on today.

JAY MCCORD: Thanks, Jacob. Well, I'm here to show you the next generation Octomill 06. This is the latest release from Seco Tools for our indexable milling products. One of the great things about the Octomill 06 that we've actually introduced is a new connection on the pocket that has not only secured the insert, but it's also enabled us to provide more than just Octomill inserts in this cutter body. Right now, if you notice, we have a moderate high feed insert and we can also install a round insert in the same cutter body as well.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So this is an interesting concept. So indexable milling, right? A lot of people when you're doing features on your part you have to have your roughing end mill, your semi finisher, your finisher, your drills, your taps. You have all these tools that do a very specific job. Something that's, and I'm speculating here, something that's interesting about this is the fact that you can put in multiple types of inserts easily on this one body that can hit those different types of features of what, maybe roughing, semi-finishing, and finishing, something like that.

JAY MCCORD: This is a great cutter. Very versatile for all customer applications. We can also run all material groups from steel to stainless steel to super alloys and aluminums.

JACOB SANCHEZ: What is your perception of what it means to the actual user out there, to the machine shop? If you had to sum it up in just one, two sentences, what's your thing you want people to know?

JAY MCCORD: Absolutely. What I would say is this is going to be a great capital investment for our customers. They can purchase one tool to do many, many jobs and that's going to be something that's going to be more economical for them in the future.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Oh, if we're talking about capital investments, sometimes I like to represent the industry when we're talking about spending that money. I don't spend any of my money until I see something in action. You mind if we get this going?

JAY MCCORD: Let's go.

JACOB SANCHEZ: All right, Ross, it's time to see some chips flying. I'm ready to see this going. What do you got for us?

ROSS ZAMEROSKI: All right, so I have the moderate high feed inserts set up into the Octomill and we're just going to rough case the top of this 4140 block. Let’s get that going.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So what's speeds and feeds are you running on this?

ROSS ZAMEROSKI: So we are feeding at 178 inches per minute. We're spinning at 1400-ish RPM. You're on about 55 thou depth of cut. 1.5 inches. That's our stepover.

JACOB SANCHEZ: What's a spindle load out to?

ROSS ZAMEROSKI: The spindle load is about 100%. So we're getting solid capacity there. So, really maxing out the spindle.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Look at that beauty. Let's get the doors open. This right here. Even though it's rough as heck.

Those chips were coming off like little dimes, like little nickels.

MIKE SMITH: Yeah, nice heat in there.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And the heat in the actual chips. I think that's a big thing too, when you're doing a cutting like this, doing roughing at that type of speed. It's making sure that the heat’s going to your chips, not to your inserts or to your part.

JAY MCCORD: Absolutely what you're looking for that blue color is 4140 steel. So it's a nice betting steel, but you want to put all that heat into the chip. And you'll notice that the chip will turn actually a little bit blue and that's giving you a good indication that that heat is going into that chip.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So, you’re about to see some more chips fly; little thicker cut. We're going to get after it. We're doing a semi-finishing pass though, right Jay, but you said it was a thicker cut?

JAY MCCORD: What I want to show you is the same facing path we had done before. Now, instead of using the moderate high feed inserts, which is a great insert for this style machine, where you can't maybe use the same high feed inserts that other machines can use... the motor high feed works great for that. But now we're going to be using a standard traditional Octo insert.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Oh that's right we switched our inserts...

JAY MCCORD: ...at a larger depth of cut, a slower feed rate... but you're going to get a similar metal removal rate.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Nice! Oh yeah.

JAY MCCORD: You hear that sound difference is a little bit deeper sound now. And you see the depth of cut change that we have in there.

ROSS ZAMEROSKI: And I know we're running at 110 thou rather than 55. So we almost doubled that. That spindle speed is about the same. We're about almost 1300 RPM. But like Jay had said, we slowed it down a lot. So now we're running at 63 inches per minute.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And interestingly enough too, our spindle speed dropped down, probably around what, the 85s maybe, maxing out at the 85?

ROSS ZAMEROSKI: You spent a load drop a little bit. Nice.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So when this finishes we're still going to see because this was still a roughing operation, we're still going to see... I mean dude still a cold part. That is awesome.

JAY MCCORD: But we're going to notice that surface finish looks a little bit better than it did with a moderate high feed insert.

JACOB SANCHEZ: At least more consistent.

JAY MCCORD: Yeah absolutely.

JACOB SANCHEZ: But now what we're going to move on to let's see if this thing I mean still not hot. You know, I'm going to take this out. We're actually going to switch to now we're doing a finishing path.

JAY MCCORD: Now we're on to a new path.

JACOB SANCHEZ: All right.

How many times am I'm going to have to close these doors today? Jay... We got another toolpath coming up. We got another feature getting shown. What are we attacking?

JAY MCCORD: All right, so now we're actually going to run a similar insert that we had before. So it's the same insert size but this has in the same insert edge. But this one is actually a wiper insert compared to the other one which did not have the wiper insert on it. And the main reason we're running this is to show the flexibility where you can choose different inserts with different features that change the operations that you have on the part.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Nice.

MIKE SMITH: Hey Jay, can you clarify real quick? You say you got wipers in there. How many wipers do you have in the cutter?

JAY MCCORD: That's actually a really good... Good question right there. So this is not a dedicated wiper. This is an integrated wiper. So every insert actually includes a wiper feature on there. Now we do have dedicated wiper options. That is something we can do. But again it depends on your part requirements. And this flexibility, the versatility, that we offer with the Octo 6 to get that for you.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So now we're going to get to the point where we're actually seeing some nice finishes. Correct?

JAY MCCORD: Absolutely.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And still still dry... which I think is I honestly for a lot of like steels and things and certain exotic materials when you can do it, obviously can't do it for all. But I think that cutting dry, depending on your depth of cut in your feeds, you'll get a nicer finish. Because it's almost to me, I feel like because of how much heat you're transferring to those small chips, it's like they're burning off instead of getting cut off. And I think it leaves a nicer finish.

JAY MCCORD: Our recommendation from a tool life standpoint, if you're running steel parts with Seco grades, always run your tool...

JACOB SANCHEZ: Nice. And especially not doing any of that... I know this isn't a coolant video, but just for the information out there so all of you know, doing that, flip and switch, like, where you're like, coolant on, coolant off, coolant on, coolant off Is that actually shocking? Is that actually bad for the inserts?

JAY MCCORD: It's bad for the inserts. That's what we call thermal cracking or thermal fracturing the inserts hot cold, hot cold and will result in actual physical cracks that you can see on the insert if you do run the operation like that.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Let's get in here look at this a little bit. Nice. Yeah. Now you're starting to see that. That is so clean.

JAY MCCORD: Really nice surface finish on there. And that's and that's utilizing that wiper. Just make sure when you do that you will make sure that your feed per tooth is less than the wiper edge that you have on the insert and you’re going to get a real nice cut.

JACOB SANCHEZ: We're going to dive into one more operation, correct? We're going to switch these out for a different type of insert entirely?

JAY MCCORD: Yeah, so primarily what we’ve been doing so far is just roughing with a facing style insert with a moderate high feed. Then we use two different styles of the Octo 6 inserts. But again this cutter can use different style inserts. Now we're going to put a button cutter insert in there, a round insert, and we're going to do some profiling.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So this is the last time that I'm closing those doors. Hopefully this is the last stop. Jay... what do we got going on?

JAY MCCORD: All right. So, talking about versatility. Talk about flexibility. Talk about different things that we can do with this cutter. So now we're putting round inserts in there. So with a round insert I really have a wide range of operations that I can do. I can do anything from a facing path, a high feed path or a profiling path. And so 3D cutting is what we're going to try now.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So we've hit the rough. We’ve hit two, technically two roughing passes. We've done finishing. Ooh nice. We’re about to do some profiling, all with the same cutter but with different cutters, different inserts.

JAY MCCORD: And that's what's really great about this is that it gives you the flexibility of choosing the insert that you need for your operation whether you're roughing, for your finishing or your profiling.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Let's take a look at this one. That pattern is crazy.

JAY MCCORD: Yeah, that's due to the... I mean we're running. And you see just how fast we were running earlier.

JACOB SANCHEZ: I mean, you consider that a roughing... That's a rough pass. It looks that good that's crazy. Let's see how we feel in up here I mean, that is still, there hasn't been any point where obviously I wouldn’t hold this for too long, but still tapping it like this? Not that bad.

JAY MCCORD: We want to make sure we run our feeds and speeds, so that we're running all that heat into the chip.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Two sides of the same cutter. We have had a lot going on today. There's been different inserts. There's been different features, different feeds and speeds. We're going to bring that all home for you right now. Mike, what do we got going on over here?

MIKE SMITH: Well basically kind of what Jay was talking about earlier, the versatility. But I mean roughing, you know, in this type of machine you’ve got to have the right cutter and I think this gives you a nice combination of ability, for both roughing and I know I'm talking roughing, but he's going to be talking finishing, but it gives you the ability to do both. And so, by having that versatility and be able to run this in a smaller machine or, something, you know, that's like a CAT 40, I think is ideal. And as we saw, you can get very aggressive with this thing. So that's a key for your productivity.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Yep. Jay what you have on your side, that was a lot more of the finishing. And then when we really started to take a turn and switch out inserts entirely correct?

JAY MCCORD: Absolutely. So over here we ran the Octo 6 inserts with the wiper insert at a lower feed rate. We're about four thou per flute on that one. About 10 thou depth of cut. And that left us a really nice finish. And so it showed the versatility of using the integrated wiper in that insert to achieve that finish as well. But then like you said, we mixed it up entirely and we put the round insert in there. And that's where we can show where this cutter over here has true versatility of not just doing facing and basic machining operations like that, but we can use this as a 3D profiler cut... surfacing parts and things like that.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Nice. I appreciate the insight fellas. At the end of the day, when you're picking a cutter, when you're picking a new tool, it's just to get the job done. You're attacking a part, you're attacking a feature. Do it on the technicality of the cutter. Do it on the logistics of your business.

A bustling industry, a beautiful facility, and a tool that we found that can finally help us solve this challenge of how do we do more with less. It was an amazing day today with a lot of different insight, not just from the versatility of tooling, but the versatility of tooling in your shop, the versatility of being able to do more with less, to figure out different ways to fixture, to set up, to attack a part. That was the theme of today, not just how this amazing tool from Seco can replace almost all of this, but it's about how you use that in your shop productively to make it so you can free up space for more jobs on one machine to get more parts in your facility so you can get more parts out of it. Now, I don't think we need these anymore. I think now we've learned and hopefully you learned a little bit more about how to maximize tooling versatility.

Narrator: For more metalworking tips and industry best practices, stay tuned for the next How To episode and subscribe to the MSC Industrial Supply YouTube channel, a source of original manufacturing content Built To Make You Better.