VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Increasing Productivity with Kennametal Tangential Milling Cutters

Narrator: Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company that provides real-world insights brought to you by leading industry experts and aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operations.

Eddie: What's up everybody, this is Eddie with MSC and welcome to MSC's Tooling Up featuring Kennametal. Today we're going to talk about one of Kennametal's toughest tools, the MILL 4-12KT and here to tell us everything that we need to know about this tool, we have our good friend from the Kennametal team, Tony. Hey Tony, thank you so much for joining us today and before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the team at Kennametal.

Tony: Oh absolutely, good morning Eddie, great to be here with you guys again. My name is Tony McClain. I've been with Kennametal for about 10 years. I'm a regional product marketing manager so I pretty much cover the indexable milling products that Kennametal has to offer. I work with our global product managers around the world as well as our marketing department as well as our field support guys, our sales guys, and do a lot of training and application support for our customers as well.

Eddie: Wonderful, we thank you so much for joining us as our industry leading expert and as we get started, we know something very special about the MILL 4-12KT is its tangential mounting. So for those of us who may not be as familiar, tell us what that means and why it's so important for the MILL 4-12KT.

Tony: Well Eddie, typically there's two types of mounted inserts out there. There's the radial mounted inserts which is probably the most common when we come to face milling, or 90 degree shoulder mills as you see there in the photo. And then there's tangential mounted inserts. So the MILL 4-12KT it's the four stands for the four corners that it gives you on the insert. It's a 12 millimeter IC so there's where you get the MILL 4-12 and then the KT stands for Kennametal tangential.

Eddie: Well very good, very good. And as we've talked about this tool, we have the idea that it can run faster while also maintaining that strength. How does it do this Tony?

Tony: Well as you've seen in the photo there, a tangential mounted insert versus let's say a radial mounted insert is typically by the way it fits into the pocket so you can see a tangential mount of the insert is shallower. When a radial mounted insert has to go into the cutter further, so it goes into the body deeper I guess if we can call it that. So basically with the radial mounted you get a smaller core diameter versus tangential mounted you get a larger core diameter. So you also get the support behind the insert. Then you get all the cutting forces pushed into the insert versus with the radial mounted where everything's out there hammering on an unsupported corner of the insert. So a tangential mounted insert it just gives you added strength, it gives you the added core diameter which gives the cutter more rigidity and more strength so it enables you to be able to run higher feed rates, heavier chip loads and, of course, increase your metal removal rate.

Eddie: Well very good and so translating that back into a shop owner's perspective, when it comes to the MILL 4-12KT how could a stronger and faster tool change operations at the spindle?

Tony: Hey, great question. So you know we always say time is money so when we're looking at a job that's been quoted you get it out there on your machine tool and you know, you start wheeling away on it as I say. You know we want to think about how we can get the highest metal removal rate we can and you know we not only do we want high metal removal rate but we want good tool life and we want a stable process. I mean we can get high metal removal rates a lot of different ways, but if we're having to stop the machine and we're having to index inserts or change inserts or things of that nature, then you're really not benefiting any significant way because you're having to stop the machine all the time and make adjustments and do things differently. So with the tangential, again, you get the strength of the tangential insert, you get the impact or the forces going back into the long part of the insert, back into the cutter body. You got that larger core diameter so you get that added strength and rigidity.

Eddie: There you go, very important things to an operator indeed. And as we're continuing to talk about the MILL 4-12KT, let's take a second to compare it to maybe some other carbide cutters in the world of face milling. So how do you think it stacks up in the market?

Tony: I think it stacks up very well. I mean you know there's a lot of factors when we think about machining and how we're going to approach a part and how we're actually going to you know machine it, and when we think about face mills or 90 degree shoulder mills. So in some applications you're just facing material off and some applications you're going up against a wall or a shoulder which we refer to as shoulder milling. So you can see from the tangential insert itself that it does have like an integrated wiper facet built into the insert, it has a margin relief, so it actually pulls about 15 percent less horsepower than some of the other cutters that are available out there on the market. So it's free cutting, you can run it on lower horsepower machines, you can run it on smaller spindle type machines, even in some live tooling spindles as well. So it just gives you that added flexibility and security that you need in applications when you're machining your part.

Eddie: No absolutely. And then when it comes to the mounting, we keep talking about the tangential mounting. Let's see really how that compares to let's say radial mounting. What do you have to say when it compares those two?

Tony: Well it's night and day so you know the first thing that comes to mind when you look at a tangential mounted insert is the access to the screw. So it's easy just to get your screw wrench on there and unscrew it and index the insert or flip it around. When a radial mounted sometimes depending on the different style of cutters, sometimes you're going to angle it in there and you got to hold it just right and stand on one leg and all that kind of stuff to get the screw undone and get a new insert in there or index the insert. And then again, it just goes back to some of the key factors that we've spoke about Eddie. You know it's going to be that shallow pocket design that gives you that larger core diameter, that gives you that added strength over radial mounted inserts, and gives you that added stiffness to bending motions and things especially if you've got to run it in a long overhang situation where you're gonna hang the tool out a long ways. So it just really gives you that insert security, the tool security, and the added flexibility to run higher feed rates and higher metal removal rates.

Eddie: Now you mentioned a term just a second ago, long overhangs. Isn't that something that we should be afraid of?

Tony: You know, it's nothing that anybody ever really wants to do because we know the second we stick things out further than let's say what manufacturers recommend or what we in our own minds think is too far, we know the challenges that that's going to create and it's going to create chatter, vibration. Carbide inserts like a stable cut, they don't like any kind of vibration at all, so typically as we hang tools longer out the spindle, further out the spindle, then we end up inducing what's called vibration or chatter which decreases the tool life. So again, you got a tool hanging out a long ways, you kind of know OK, I'm probably not going to get the best tool life here, I'm probably going to get a little bit of a chatter and then you got to think about maybe a secondary operation that you're going to have to do because you're going to have to try to get in there and clean the chatter up. So you know that's one thing about the MILL 4-12KT you know, it's offered in coarse and medium pitch cutters. It's a variable pitch cutter which helps cut down and break the harmonics up of the cutter, and then of course the design of the insert itself with the margin on it, it's free cutting and all of those things help reduce chatter and vibration. So it works very well in long overhangs which none of us like to utilize a tool in long overhangs but we always do, so it works very well in that type of application.

Eddie: Hey no, this makes sense and then when it comes to that point, how is this going to affect our surface finish?

Tony: Well you know, surface finish is always something we have to keep in mind and again, like I said when it's hanging out a long ways and we get vibration then we have to start thinking about if we have to run a secondary tool you know. We're going to run a secondary tool to come in and clean up or to get a better surface finish. Well the MILL 4-12KT insert actually has integrated wiper facet in the insert or wiper design built into the insert and it really provides a superior floor finish and it provides a very good shoulder finish as well. You know these are available in what I call two styles of inserts. So we have pressed inserts, we call them PSTS, press and center to size inserts, and we have ground inserts. So you know if you really run in the close tolerance part you need that excellent side finish wall, you need an excellent floor finish wall, then I would recommend using the ground insert. If you're just rough machining or you don't really need a superior surface finish, then you might want to use a more economical pressed insert versus over the ground insert, but again that provides a very good surface finish whether using the ground or the pressed. Both of them provide very good surface finishes.

Eddie: No, this is wonderful reassurance for those applications where surface finish is absolutely vital. So now that we've learned a little bit more about the mounting and the performance of the MILL 4-12KT, let's talk about where it's being used within the market. So do you have any specific applications or examples that we could speak to?

Tony: Oh absolutely. So you know where can it be used and it can be used anywhere. I mean I just want to say that you know we have the grades that cover all material classes for the most part. We don't have nonferrous, but we do have the insert grades that cover steel, stainless steel, cast iron and high-temp. alloys. So when you think about any manufacturing facility, any mom-and-pop shop, any job shop, to an aerospace manufacturer that are running those type of materials, again at this time it's currently not available in a nonferrous grade but it does cover all the other material ranges. It's also available in multiple corner radii so from 15,000 sub ten eighth inch with no modification needed to the cutter body. So it doesn't matter if you're running the 15,000 radius or an eighth inch radius, you don't need to modify the cutter body. Ssometimes on radial mounted inserts they try to get the support as high out there as they can on that corner edge and when you go to a larger radius sometimes we have to modify the steel so it gives a clearance for the radius of the larger insert.

In the MILL 4-12KT there's no modification that needs to be done. You know it's a strong insert. It gives it that strength. You know we did an excellent video a while back. We call it swiss cheese and it really shows the versatility of the cutter. Nobody likes long overhangs and nobody likes interrupted cuts so as you can see, this cutter going through the different slots on that part, going through all those holes that were drilled in that part and when it was all said and done, we could have ran another part maybe even a few more parts without indexing the inserts. So that's really a challenge you know. Carbide milling cutters don't like going in and out of the cut, they like to stay engaged in the cut and you've got to think about the entry and the exit angle for each individual hole. So it really puts a hammering on those inserts, so the swiss cheese video really demonstrates the strength and the rigidity not only of the tangential design and mounted inserts but also of the added core diameter to the cutter body.

Eddie: No, this is great to be able to see it work in a variety of these applications at the spindle. And then additionally, do you have any general case studies or examples of where this is being used successfully in the field?

Tony: Absolutely, we do have several different case studies. We have one here so you can see we call this a HERO product success. So we were running up against some other inserts and cutters that were out there. It's A514 material as you can see there it is a face mill, looks like it's a little over three inch diameter and it was running dry on a HMC DMG mooring machine. So basically the nuts and bolts of it was is that at the end of the day, I should say at the start of the day, you know the customer was was wanting increased metal removal rate, increased production, and improved tool life. So we were able to bring in the MILL 4-12KT and run this particular test and we increased tool life by 148%. So we took it from what they were getting, 25 minutes of tool life to 62 minutes of tool life per corner on the insert so a huge cost savings to the customer. They were happy and tickled to death that they were able to run for 62 minutes before having to stop the machine and index the insert. So again, I mean and we got multiple different success stories we can share with people if they can always reach out and we can provide them information as well.

Eddie: No, it's great to be able to see this work at the spindle but then also hear of success stories that are happening in real time. This is all great information and as we wrap up this episode Tony, what are some of the final things that we need to know about the MILL 4-12KT?

Tony: Well you know, in today's current times and everybody wants to be more productive and everybody's watching you know I always say their wallet, you know, I mean we want to reduce the amount of different tools we may use in our facility. So the MILL 4-12KT is a perfect, I call it a plug and play. You can bring it in. Again, we've got multiple corner radii to cover the different applications you may need. We got press and center to size or pressed inserts, we got ground inserts, and then of course you know multiple different diameters on the cutter body. We also just, I want to make mention here as well, we also have left-handed inserts as well at this time. We don't have the left-handed cutter body as a standard, but it is available as a custom and there's a lot of applications out there where they run right-hand, left-hand spindles where a left-handed cutter may be needed in that particular production. And we've also found that the tangential inserts that we have designed work so well that they're being introduced into slotting cutters. So we also have them out there in slotting cutters as well so don't hesitate to reach out to us. A lot of the world's slotting applications are made by custom tools so here we have a standard insert to put into a custom slotting tool if you know somebody needs it, but you know it's just an it's a powerhouse, it's a tool you've seen it on the swiss cheese video, I mean you know bring it in, run it, run the different grades, run the different radii, and hopefully you can replace some other tools that typically you've had to swap back and forth and this can be your go-to tool in your facility.

Eddie: There we go. Wonderful info. and for those who are looking for more information not on just the MILL 4-12KT but all the other amazing products that Kennametal brings to the market, where can we get this info.?

Tony: Well, you can go to kennametal.com. We have landing pages there that cover the majority of all our tools. All our tools are going to be at kennametal.com. You go to mscdirect.com, you can always reach out to your kennametal representative as well as your MSC metalworking specialist. They'll be more than happy and they're very knowledgeable and can help you and also go to mscdirect.com and MSC's Better MRO page as well to get all kinds of additional information on tooling.

Eddie: Wonderful. We've learned so many things. We appreciate you for joining us in being our industry leading expert and thank all of you for joining us on our latest episode of MSC's Tooling Up featuring Kennametal. 

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the Tooling Up video playlist to see how we can help improve your operations and subscribe to our channel so you never miss out.