{"id":3066,"date":"2022-10-27T14:11:16","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T14:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/?p=3066"},"modified":"2022-10-27T14:11:16","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T14:11:16","slug":"summer-of-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/27\/summer-of-steel\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer of steel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/P1020293a-1024x788.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"308\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A better part of the summer has kept us busy cutting steel. About of ton and half of forged 4340 Aircraft steel. The kind that trashes carbide endmills in a couple of hours.<\/p>\n<p>These parts start as 37 pound forged blocks and wind up at the end about 2.5 pounds. That a lot of chips.<\/p>\n<p>And it pretty much kept our two 5-axis mills busy and noisy throughout the summer. And it kept me busy programming.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t say the part was easy. There was a lot of tweaking of toolpath entries\/exits, feed and speed adjustments, depth of cut optimization. Without attention to those details we would&#8217;ve wound up going through more 1 inch carbide endmills than I care to imagine.<\/p>\n<p>Add to this the fact that since this is a structural aerospace fitting for for an E2-Hawkeye, there&#8217;s going to be a mirror image part. (Planes are symmetrical, right?). That means that almost as much work needs to go into a mirror image part. You can&#8217;t just use mirror imaging of toolpaths (a feature all good CNC&#8217;s have). In applications such as this it&#8217;s practically useless. That means new and separate programming.<\/p>\n<p>Yet once dialed in it was running like a charm. Not that it didn&#8217;t require constant attention to details, such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">\u00a0the .005 location tolerance of the intersection of the angular offset.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">The tight channel on the acute angle on the boss. There wasn&#8217;t much room to get a cutter through there.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">Constant attention to blends between rotations as cutters wear. It seems like that would be easy once offsets are dialed in, but anyone cutting 5-axis milling work would tell you that it ain&#8217;t so.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<style>\/*! elementor - v3.7.8 - 02-10-2022 *\/\n.elementor-widget-image{text-align:center}.elementor-widget-image a{display:inline-block}.elementor-widget-image a img[src$=\".svg\"]{width:48px}.elementor-widget-image img{vertical-align:middle;display:inline-block}<\/style>\n<figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"262\" src=\"https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/P1020289a-1-300x262.jpg\" alt=\"A good angle view of steel machined part\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/P1020289a-1-300x262.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/P1020289a-1-1024x896.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/P1020289a-1-768x672.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/P1020289a-1-1536x1343.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/P1020289a-1-2048x1791.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption>Position of intersections on this angle must stay within .005&#8243;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/20221004_142329-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/20221004_142329-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/20221004_142329-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/20221004_142329-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/20221004_142329-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/20221004_142329-scaled-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption>Fixturing must be accurate and bombproof.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Fixturing a 5-axis machined part like this requires just as much planning and attention to detail as the part programs themselves:<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It must be accurate within .002&#8243;<\/li>\n<li>It must have good repeatbility<\/li>\n<li>It must have accurate locating for reloading<\/li>\n<li>It must be sturdy enough to stand up to cutting steel. Yet:<\/li>\n<li>It must be designed in a way to allow access to all areas requiring cutter access. Thoughtful clamp placement is essential.<\/li>\n<li>It must be versatile enough to hold both mirror image parts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This part has been part a standard repeat item for us for many years, since long before we had 5-axis machining. What once took us up to 14 operations now can be accomplished in 3, thanks to our 5-axis mills.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t wait until we get another one.<\/p>\n<figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/P1010165-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/P1010165-1.jpg 640w, https:\/\/stcind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/P1010165-1-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption>The finished part<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These parts start as 37 pound forged blocks and wind up at the end about 2.5 pounds. That a lot of chips.<\/p>\n<p>And it pretty much kept our two 5-axis mills busy throughout the summer. And it kept me busy programming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stcind.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}