The machining tool selector

Why

A tooling customer asks what to use for a job and what to run it at.

How

Describe the part, the material, the machine and the cut; every result line names its table.

What it asks for

• The part: a block or billet, a plate, a round bar, a tube or a casting or forging, and its size.
• The material, one of sixteen the published cutting data covers, with its condition where that changes the answer.
• The machine and the operation: nine milling operations, seven turning operations and seven ways of making a hole.
• Only the cut figures that operation needs, the finish for a finishing pass, and the machine's speed and power.

What it returns

• The tool: diameter, flutes, coating, corner and reach for a solid tool, or the ISO 1832 designation, nose radius, grade, chipbreaker and entering angle for an indexable one.
• The cutting data: speed, spindle speed, feed, table feed, depth and width of cut, removal rate, power and torque.
• The setup: climb or conventional, entry, coolant, pecking, passes and workholding.
• The warnings the cut earns, from a spindle that cannot pull it to an excluded coating.

How it reads a published table

A published feed carries the chip thinning of its row's engagement. At a different engagement the selector takes the feed back to the row's chip thickness and forward to yours, rather than quoting it across unchanged.

Where it abstains

No published row, no speed: for example solid carbide slotting in hardened steel, or high speed steel in aluminium, titanium or the nickel alloys. It states no tool life in minutes; it reports what a change of speed costs in life, which the Taylor exponent supports. Where publishers disagree, it names the one it used and says they disagree, rather than averaging them.

What it matches

It reads end mills, drills, reamers, inserts and holders across their schemas and scores each against its own kind. Holders follow the inserts, because a holder is the accessory rather than the answer.

Solid carbide or PCD

For a milling job on solid carbide, the selector sets out both ways to make the tool: a solid carbide end mill and a PCD tipped one with the same diameter, shank and flutes. It ranks them for the job: PCD first on high silicon aluminium or when tool life comes first, carbide first on wrought aluminium. PCD is never offered for steel, stainless or cast iron, and the card says why.

• Each card lists what that tool means for the job, and each point names its source.
• Tool preference puts the family you prefer first wherever both suit the work. It never puts PCD first on iron or steel.
• Quantity prices both designs at the same quantity through each design module, at your own rates where you have set them and at the design module's example rates otherwise. The card says which.
• With both prices in, one line gives the ratio between them: the PCD tool pays for itself once it cuts that many times the parts of the carbide one before it is reground or replaced. No tool life is assumed.

Design this one opens that tool's design module with the geometry already set.

The Cutting tools preset installs the selector with its schemas. See Kabaido for cutting tool makers and distributors.