The 5 axis guy at the shop next door changed how I think about toolpaths

I was chatting with this older machinist, Mike, he runs a small custom job shop about 3 blocks from my place. We got to talking about roughing passes and he said something like 'you're not cutting metal, you're managing heat.' I thought about it for a second and realized he's totally right. I've been pushing feeds too hard trying to get parts done fast, and my endmills were burning up after like 20 parts. He showed me a trochoidal toolpath program he wrote for a tough stainless job and the chip evacuation was way better than anything I've been doing. Now I'm spending more time on entry moves and less on replacing tooling. Has anyone else had a veteran machinist drop a simple line on you that flipped your whole approach?

1 comments

1 Comment

wright.taylor19d ago

Mike with the 5 axis shop down the street told me something similar last year about chip thinning and I honestly wasn't buying it at first. I put his advice to the test on a 304 stainless job with a 1/2 inch endmill running at 350 sfm and a super light radial engagement like 5 percent. My tool life went from maybe 15 parts to over 60 before I had to index the inserts. But here's the thing though. Trochoidal paths aren't always the answer. I tried it on some aluminum parts with deep pockets and the cycle time went way up because I couldn't get the chip load right without programming like 50 tiny loops. That veteran advice works great for certain materials and setups but it's not a universal fix for every roughing pass you do. Your mileage may vary depending on your machine rigidity and your CAM software's ability to generate those smooth arcs.