Increased Cost Effectiveness in Machining Hardened Steel

For producing homokinetic joints of hardened steel, numerous automotive manufacturers and suppliers rely on CPMill ball nose milling cutters from Mapal Dr. Kress KG (Aalen, Germany) that use a new, highly-spiralled geometry to ensure optimal chip removal. Instead of four cutting edges, the new solid carbide ball nose milling cutter has five. The coating has also been improved in addition to the base substrate. CPMill ball nose milling cutters are equipped with a CFS interface for easy changing of the milling heads. Through the precise tuning of the taper and face, a high concentricity of ≤ 5 μm, excellent rigidity and consistently high quality are achieved.

The CPMill ball nose milling cutter can significantly reduce machining time per component through much higher cutting and feed rates. In one shop where 75,000 parts were previously machined in one week, around 12 percent more (85,000 parts) were produced by using this five-edged cutter with the same machine capacity and without any additional investment in equipment. The milling cutter also has a 25 percent higher service life than the previous model. Solid carbide CPMill ball nose milling cutters expand the milling cutter range for lightweight materials.

As the trend towards lightweight construction results in the constant development of new materials with a very wide range of properties that create new demands on machining, tool manufacturers must react to the fact that reliable machining is no longer assured with the normal geometries. In response, Mapal has expanded its extensive milling cutter product range to include four new high-performance milling cutters: the OptiMill-Thermoplastic, OptiMill-Thermoplastic-FR, OptiMill-Composite-UD and OptiMill-Honeycomb, all available in a wide range of dimensions.

The solid carbide OptiMill-Thermoplastic uses very sharp cutting edges for reliable machining of thermoplastics that are widely used in the automotive sector in the production of instrument panels. Due to its low melting temperature, thermoplastic material requires special tool geometries in order to avoid melting. The special geometry of the OptiMill-Thermoplastic not only ensures the optimum discharge of the chips, but also minimizes the build-up of heat during milling. The OptiMill-Thermoplastic-FR cutter is available for machining special fiber-reinforced thermoplastics, predominantly carbon fibers. Because carbon fibers are very abrasive, this solid carbide milling cutter is diamond coated and arranges its cutting edges around the circumference so that fibers are cut off cleanly without burr formation.

The OptiMill-Composite-UD solid carbide end milling cutter is ideal for milling parts made from fiber composite materials such as CFRP that are either very thin or are difficult to machine. Its cutting edge geometry achieves a simultaneous pulling and pushing cut, with a compression effect in the part that prevents delamination and fiber projections. This milling cutter is diamond coated for a long tool life.

Due to their low weight and flexural strength, honeycomb structures are used for support and reinforcement between the inner and outer skin of aircraft or in the vanes of wind energy converters. The difficulty when machining this very light material is its comb structure. The eight-bladed OptiMill-Honeycomb solid carbide end milling cutter meets the special demands of machining honeycombs with extremely sharp cutting edges, a helix angle of 15 deg and very fine serration. It reliably machines even honeycombs with a wide variety of outer layers or with fillings.

Mapal Fabrik für Präzisionswerkzeuge Dr. Kress KG, Obere Bahnstraße, D-73431 Aalen, Germany, +49 73 61/5 85-0, info@de.mapal.com, www.mapal.com.