VIDEO: HOW TO Machine Exotic Materials

JACOB SANCHEZ: You're a small to medium sized metalworking business and you're looking to level up. You need to get ITAR registered. It's going to be a new level of customer base and new jobs. But be warned, it is tough. You're going to have to work at it. Your team is going to face new challenges. One of those challenges is going to be your tooling selection.

No more high speed drills, no more you guys guessing on the feeds and speeds. You need the right partners and the right technology to get that job done. Here at NTL Industries, all of those decisions were made by them to get ITAR registered, to get their first customer, first job, a new material, Nitronic 50, that they've never machined.

So when they went to Seco Tools, they needed more than just some end mills. They needed industry specialists to help them get that job done and out that door. You're here with me and so many others, and you're going to be able to see us getting hands on, looking at the challenges, the solutions, the struggles, and the pride that you can take when you learn HOW TO machine exotic materials.

It’s time to dive straight in. I'm bringing Greg McArthur, the owner here at NTL Industries, to talk to you all. Hey Greg?

GREG MCARTHUR: Yes, sir.

JACOB SANCHEZ: You mind coming over for a sec?

GREG MCARTHUR: Yeah, not a problem.

JACOB SANCHEZ: How's it going, my man?

GREG MCARTHUR: Nice to see you my friend.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Dude, machinist, back home. I'm loving the smell. I'm loving seeing money moving, chips flying. This is awesome. Definitely. So with that new job, we're going to be going over as a leader and a business owner, give me some, three bullet points that what was going through your head?

GREG MCARTHUR: All right. So the first thing is the material. It's a Nitronic 50, it’s a duplex type super material. So super difficult to deal with. The second one is our tooling. Right now, we're using a general-purpose end mill, so we're going to try to speed that up a little bit, and the third one is the way we're holding on to things and the way we're setting it up with the new tooling and everything like that that we reached out to Seco and MSC. Figured out what's on the market for this type of material. So at that case and point, you know, we've got to keep moving forward with the different type of things. So that way you're not sitting ducks.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So it's about innovation. It's about getting your customers product on time, and getting it out the door. Dude, I keep yapping with you, but I rather do it in front of a machine. Let's get into this process, let’s start solving some problems. So want to just go get after it? Let’s go.

GREG MCARTHUR: Let's go.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Yeah dude, I'm excited to see this tool comparison.

So I think you were telling me it's going to be a six flute from Seco versus, like, a standard four flute or something?

GREG MCARTHUR: Yes.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Hey, how’s it going Mike? Good to see you.

Your ears must’ve been burning man, we were talking about some good tooling. I want to hear about it. So what have we got going on again? So you reached out to Seco, MSC, to figure out, hey, this new material, I need some help with it. We need to boost productivity of this. You didn't want to do your generic feeds and speeds clocking 40 inches a minute.

Like, give me the run down. How'd that dynamic go?

GREG MCARTHUR: So I reach out to Mike and Seco, and he brought in, I think it's a six flute.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Oh, is that the one?

MIKE SMITH: Yeah, that's the one.

GREG MCARTHUR: So a six flute cutter. And it has a special kind of coating in it for this type of material. So that's what we're going to use, right?

MIKE SMITH: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This is our six flute 638. So basically it’s like Greg was mentioning it’s a HTA coating, which stands for high temp alloys. So it's very heat resistant.

GREG MCARTHUR: And this isn't your general ER32 collet holder I see here?

MIKE SMITH: No, that's a good catch, Greg. Basically this is a ER collet chuck on steroids. So basically it's a high-precision collet chuck. It's a high-precision collet.

So when you actually put that together, you get a very good gripping force, very low run out, and it’s perfect for this type of operation.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So what do we have in there right now? We have this.

GREG MCARTHUR: So this is a general-purpose, all around four flute end mill that we're using, it has a 30 thou rad on it. So that's what I use here to rough out a start. So we had good chip load and everything like that. We're just running a little slow.

MIKE SMITH: What are you running that at Greg?

GREG MCARTHUR: So this one was running about 44 inches a minute, about 1240 RPMs.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Standard. Industry standard, but that does not mean efficient.

GREG MCARTHUR: No.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So what are we bumping up to, Mike? And give me a little feedback, if you can, on how tough it is sometimes going into businesses and not just showing them, but having to convince them of, hey, this is how you’ve done it the past 10, 15 years, but I really believe this is what can help solve some problems. Give me a little feedback on that.

MIKE SMITH: Well, yeah, I mean, I came from a shop background and I had a lot of guys who would say, Hey, we've been doing it this way for 30 years and this has worked ever since. But you know, you run into new material, there's new ways of attacking, you know, a tool pass and that kind of thing. And obviously there's new tooling.

So that's kind of what, you know, I love to do, is to share that information. You know, Greg's very open minded, so hey, Mike, what can we do different? And so this is an opportunity to come out. Show what we got and you know help the productivity.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Apparently, I heard that we're getting down to super speeds as low as 6 to 10 minutes. Now, what they were running before was 33 minutes for a roughing cycle. This is going to be amazing. I can't wait to check it out.

You guys just heard is what's going to be a probably an end mill change. Common stuff.

So what happens with this is you have certain runtimes for your tools. Nothing lasts forever. Some tools when you're running at higher end feeds and speeds to boost your productivity, they're eventually not going to break, not going to shatter, they chip. That's where you get that sound difference from. That's why he told, that's why he knew as an expert, as a machinist, that something was wrong.

You stop the machine, you check the tool. This is a part of the game. This is a part of the business that we're in as machinists, especially when we're trying to push the bounds and the limitations of productivity. This is awesome. We're going to get a new tool in there and get back to cutting.

All right everybody, we got that new tool in there. It's cutting again. Sounds great. Let's go talk about it. All right, fellas. New tool in there. We're back to cutting. Greg, give me your perspective on what it's like when you're trying to figure out these niche feeds and speeds for some exotic material that hasn't ran in this shop before. What's going through your mind?

GREG MCARTHUR: First off, you've got to make sure you get rid of the chips because if the chip build up is there then you’re gonna...

MIKE SMITH: Yeah honestly Greg and I did some discussion where we were, when that last part, tool, failed, and I was hypothesizing that it was in the corner radius. But actually after looking at it again and talking about it actually these are really long chips.

And so when you're entering and exiting right here on the component, we actually drag a chip in there, as simple as a chip getting in there caused a problem. So there's some tradeoffs when you're going these high elevated speeds and feeds you got to look at all the stuff that can affect it. You know, I was talking about the programming and getting the radius cracks, but also one simple thing is chip evacuation is something that we got to look at.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So talk about this, too, when it comes to chip evacuation, if that's the issue, you have a few different solutions. You can do what Greg is doing here, which is he's blowing off the chips from the machine to clear those away so he can keep cutting. You can also do higher pressurized coolant if that's an availability for your machine, or what is your guys' take on chip breakers on the end mill?

MIKE SMITH: Yeah. So actually this particular tool is available with the chip breaker. Now knowing what we know now, I probably would brought that in first, but again, we're testing. So looking at this application, it's like looking at how long these chips are  and the material, I would probably go with a chip breaker version of this.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And for my audience, explain what a chip breaker does on an end mill.

MIKE SMITH: A simple enough it’s basically to make the chip shorter along the flute of the end mill. So it’ll actually get little grooves in there that would actually make it so that the chip will break in half. So instead of having a chip that's this long, you look at chip that’s now that long. So there's less weight to it.

Coolant is actually easier to flush it away, and it goes away.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Nice. At the end of the day, you guys saw something raw, something real, something that happens in machine shops and businesses around the world, across the country every single day. Testing, increasing productivity, trying to figure out ways to get better to improve their business. Above it all, I hope you learned HOW TO machine exotic materials.

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.