The Dormer Force X upgrades the geometry, corner design and edge preparation of the MPX solid carbide drill family. The upgrade applies to the 3×D R457, 3×D R458, 5×D R453 and Carbide Milling inserts 5×D R454, bringing them in line with the 8×D R459.
With a titanium aluminum nitride (TiAlN) coating, the drills are suitable for a range of machines and materials such as stainless steel, steel alloys, cast iron and non-ferrous materials. All Force X drills include continuously-thinned tungsten carbide inserts web technology designed to reduce thrust requirements during drilling. They also feature edge preparation that protects the cutting area and prevents premature chipping and flaking. A strong corner design across the range also increases stability and reduces the forces encountered when exiting the workpiece, according to the company.
The micrograin carbide substrate, along with the TiAlN coating, is said to offer high wear resistance and increased tool life, while the 140-degree split-point geometry provides centering capabilities and low thrust forces.
The company offers both solid and coolant feed options to improve cutting efficiency and chip evacuation.
We so often write about job shops and the tools and technology those shops rely on that it can be easy to forget one important factor: The companies that manufacture these tools — including machine tool suppliers — face many of the same production challenges that machine shops and machine tool users do.
Mazak, for example, has been pioneering automation solutions for its customers for decades, building off of its Palletech system that launched in the 1980s as a solution that ties multiple machining centers together WNMG Insert under the same manufacturing cell controller software. Since that time, the company has continuously updated this system, most recently by adapting and applying it to machine tool component production as part of an $8.5 million investment into the company’s own capabilities at its North American headquarters in Florence, Kentucky.
During a recent visit to this facility I had a chance to learn about this automated production line, including its automated storage and retreival system called the Mazatec Smart Manufacturing System, or SMS. Taken together, the system represents an integrated manufacturing cell designed to perform unmanned machining through the use of horizontal machining centers and multitasking machines, along with the material handling technology of Murata Machinery. Murata is best known for its expansive capabilities in CCGT Insert material handling, and — in the case of the SMS — its vertically orientated, modular, six-level stocker-type system that includes pallets, automated load stations and high-speed stacker crane.
As a whole, this unit can best be described as as a machine tool production unit, a demonstration facility, and a solution to the same struggles around skilled labor and lead times that Mazak shares with its customers as a manufacturer.
Along with two Murata stocker systems, the core of the SMS cell consists of two HCN-6800 horizontal machining centers that accommodate 680 mm pallets, three HCN-8800 HMCs that can accept up to 1000 mm round pallets, and a Mazak Integrex E-1250 five-axis multitasking machine. Each machine is serviced by a tool transport robot that extends the effective tool capacity per machine to 1,800 tools. Each of these tools is stored either in a common tool hive or within the machines’ individual tool magazine, and each is outfitted with an RFID computer chip that stores information about tool performance and expected life.
Everything in the SMS cell — from the two stocker systems to the machine tools, to the coolant tank, to the Mazak SmartBoxes that are mounted to the side of each machine enclosure (more on that in a minute) — is connected to and commanded by a single cell controller.
The goal with this cell for Mazak is twofold: It uses it to produce major component parts for its mid-sized machining center product lines. This includes turret bases, carriages, sub-carriages and several other high-precision parts.
The other goal? To achieve the unmanned machining of these parts. To push a button and walk away. For hours. Or days. Many of the machining facilities we typically write about have this same goal. When I talked to the production personnel overseeing the system at Mazak, it became clear that some of the challenges in achieving this goal — and some of the ways this team and this system respond to them — are the shared by small and large machine shops alike.
The core concept of Mazak’s automated production cell has been around since the company first introduced its Palletech system. But it is the capability of the cell’s SmartBox IIoT technology and its manufacturing cell controller software that sets it apart from its own systems from years past.
These Smartbox devices are attached to each machine tool enclosure. They are edge-of-machine controls that provide data security and are designed to ease the connection of the machines to a Web-enabled, plant-wide network. When combined with Murata’s automated system control and Mazak’s production management software, called Smooth PMC, all components of the cell can interconnect and synchronize with a customer’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) host and manufacturing execution system (MES), in order to monitor operations, view and change schedules as needed, issue instructions, manage part program files and track tool life.
With this connectivity in place, a cell can handle system configurations that include up to 16 machines, anywhere from six to 240 pallets, and up to eight loading stations.
The goal then, and now, has been to optimize labor and allow a single operator to control multiple machines. Mazak first installed and configured a similar system back in 1988 after the company expanded its Kentucky facility, using the same concept of utilizing a material side and a pallet side for the stackers to feed several machine tools in a cell.
Rocky Rowland, Mazak’s flexible manufacturing facility manager, told me during a recent visit to the facility that the game changer for the SMS has been the automatic storage and retrieval system that ties different types of machines together, along with different pallet sizes, all of which are fed by a single stacker crane. “In the old system, we had two stackers, two racks, two rails, and two operating systems,” he says. “So it was just very difficult to try to control. But now we've combined those components together with new technology and are able to run all if it in one system.”
Kevin Sekerak, Mazak’s longtime plant manager at the Kentucky plant, estimated that his team is about halfway toward the goal of utilizing the SMS cell for unmanned machining that can take place over a weekend. COVID-19 interrupted his team’s progress toward that goal, of course, but so did the natural progression of new product lines for machine tools. New parts and components that Mazak introduced during the middle of 2020 meant pivoting toward a new batch of test cuts for these parts. But Sekerak and Rowland say that the goal of 100% unmanned machining for weekend shifts is on the horizon. The steps necessary to get there from here, they say, are already known.
Here’s how Rocky Rowland explains the future life of a finished part for a Mazak machine tool manufactured on the SMS cell over an unmanned weekend shift.
All tools, including tool duplicates to last for a weekend, have been set up using a Zoller presetter. No matter if the tool manufacturer is Kennametal, Sandvik, Seco Tools, or another brand, the tool is equipped with an RFID chip that stores all the tool information needed for use on the system. This data is generated from cloud-based data from the various tooling suppliers, which is then loaded into CAD/CAM system (Mastercam, in Mazak’s case).
The raw materials, typically castings, arrive. An operator loads the raw material from the process side to the material side of the cell, while another begins loading parts onto fixtures for first and second ops to ensure that they are ready for the machines. The coolant pans are filled. Enough pallets are loaded to run through the weekend — maybe 20 if you assume two-to-four-hour cycle times.
When all of these necessities are met, “the Palletech software says go,” Sekerak says. “Really, at that point, all operators go home. If we have 20 or 30 parts that are in the Palletech system, the machines just cycle through them one by one.” When the next machine becomes available, it pulls the part program from the network and begins to load tooling. The Palletech software then receives a signal when the part is finished. The scheduler locates the next part in line, loads the part program and readies the tooling. The software identifies where a needed tool is currently located, whether in the tool hive or in another machine, and uses the tool transport system to deliver it to the right machine.
When all criteria have been met, including spindle-mounted probing operations for in-process inspection, the process starts again and the cycle continues. “Then that part waits for the next operator to come in on Monday morning, whatever the time,” Sekerak says. “If the machines have finished, the operator places each part back in our finished material or raw material stacker, and then it's on to our CMM, unit assembly or our paint department. And that's a finished part.”
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
“What we hope to do with this system is unmanned operations,” Rowland says. The likely plan involves running two shifts while the third shift, and the weekends, are unmanned. “When labor is at a premium, it’s pretty powerful stuff when you think about running lights out and guaranteeing yourself that you have good parts coming off the line,” he continues. “So the expectation is that this line is an integrated, automatic system that is talking back and forth with our scheduling side, and being able to produce parts that meet print specifications. Let’s just call it like it is — it is easier to hire a lower-skilled operator than it is to find a senior machinist that has 18 years of experience. They're just not out there. We have to look at that variable and put that in place: How does that machine line help us manufacturer and make good parts by using smart technologies?”
Until then, Sekerak, Rowland and their teams continue the transition by test cutting parts. Sekerak points to efficiencies already gained by the Palletech system, including 92% utilization of the machines during unmanned operations. “For machine tools, that's tremendous,” he says. “We expect that utilization if not better off of these machines. It's just a matter of keeping those spindles running.”
Large tool hives and heavy tool storage. Tool transport robots. Integrated network connectivity and in-process monitoring. All of these are necessary to achieve the kind of unmanned machining that Mazak’s system was designed to offer.
Add to that chip-integrated tools that interface with the SmartBoxes stationed on every machine — another layer of automation that is worth mentioning.
When operators command the tool transport system to retrieve tools from the hive or from a machine for maintenance, they bring the tools back to the Zoller preset station. Another operator services each tool one by one then loads it into the presetter. It reads the tool chip, measures the tool and loads the measurement information onto the tool’s chip. The operator is then free to place the tool back into the system.
“For tool offsets, there's nobody punching numbers into the machine that could then make a mistake,” Sekerak says. “It's all part of that chip data. The Zoller is providing the numbers that go through the chip onto the machine so there's no confusion.”
Taken together, all of this technology and the sizable investment it represents might seem to be out of reach for the smaller, mom-and-pop machine shops that form the bulk of U.S. manufacturing operations. So I asked Kevin Sekerak: Who is the manufacturer who may not realize that it could benefit from some version of what this system is capable of doing?
“If there is one last point that I have to make it would be exactly that: this is a modular, scalable system,” he says. “There are a lot of customers that could be operating at a smaller scale that can use the Palletech with one machine and six pallets. And that may be plenty for a shop to have one single operator and continue running through the night and still fully utilize that machine. Shops are facing overseas delivery issues right now. It’s just something that the world is going through, whether it’s port congestion or delivery problems with the overseas containers. And guess what? It could be a pandemic throughout the world, that can shut down that supply chain. The Suez Canal. You name it. We're trying to offer a wide spectrum, whether it's entry level machines up to highly advanced technology, but ultimately we're just trying to give our customers solutions. We like bringing customers in here and they can see that we're building the entire machine here in Kentucky. We're bringing in raw material, we're bringing in bearings, we're machining the castings, we are making the sheet metal and painting the sheet metal. We are assembling the materials and running our spindles and building a complete machine here. Our customers are fighting the same problems and asking the same questions about whether it's still profitable to manufacture in America. But we're doing it here, with the machines they can use.”
Why does a cutting tool company now offer CAD/CAM software products? Sandvik Coromant, a well-known cutting tool technology company headquartered in Sweden, recently acquired software companies CGTech, ICAM and CNC Software Inc. Helen Blomqvist, who became global president of Sandvik Coromant in 2020 just as these acquisitions were beginning, says it has never just been about the cutting tools. The company has long sent specialists in Sandvik’s signature lab coats to advise machining facilities; Blomqvist emphasizes the company has always provided solutions rather than just tools.
Yet changes in machining technology, and in the nature of some machined parts for long-standing markets (notably the automotive industry in its shift to electric vehicles), make the elements of the machining process increasingly Threading Inserts interdependent. That means the solutions must draw on more than the cutting tool alone.
I explored this shift with Blomqvist in a recent conversation. Here is how she sees her company changing and advancing in response to shifts in manufacturing and machining:
Peter Zelinski, Modern Machine Shop: Sandvik Coromant has made some acquisitions recently that are very different from cutting tool product offerings, so let’s use that as a starting point. Help me understand the growth in the role Sandvik Coromant would like to play for manufacturers. How should we think about Sandvik Coromant, given for example its software acquisitions? What is the thumbnail description of the company as it is now? Or as it's aiming to be?
Helen Blomqvist, Sandvik Coromant: I think we have Lathe Carbide Inserts always been more than a tool supplier. I think we are very much known for our deep knowledge in machining, and for supporting our customers with many different problems. This is our core.
Looking into how we are developing, our growth journey and recent acquisitions and so on, it has very much to do with the changes that we see in the industry. It's not only about machining a component, it's very much looking at the whole manufacturing value chain. Part of our strategy to become a market leader is to take a leading position earlier in the decision process of our customers.
When you start to think about machine investments, you need to think about how you design a component, how you optimize the code, how you machine it in the best possible way and how you verify it in the end. The whole chain is of interest to us, and as customers change their behaviors and how they make decisions, we aspire to come in and be there earlier in that value chain.
I see this as representative of the kind of problem solving our yellow coats have done for years to support our customers. We also see more opportunities to support our customers much more through services: not just how to optimize and how to introduce lean and productivity improvement programs, but also other types of services as well. So that's where we are going, but it's also part of our DNA, so it's a very natural development.
MMS: Onsite problem solving has been a part of your formula. I guess part of what I'm hearing you saying is there’s an extent to which the yellow coats’ ability to solve problems is constrained if they don’t yet have access to the full range of what goes into building a process. There’s a limit to what the cutting tool is able to accomplish if the right choices aren't made early on in the process — and you're participating more in all of that. Are there challenges in the industry now that speak to this?
Blomqvist: One notable opportunity is the increased digitalization in the industry. You could also see the higher pace of electrification as a challenge for us as a company, but we choose to see this as an opportunity.
The components are changing in electric cars and battery applications. When you look at combustion engines, they’re very much standardized. That's where we come from, with standardized tools, standard inserts and all of those things. Electric cars are another type of business in the way that it's more customized, more project-type work with fast-paced design and manufacturing. It’s a more creative process.
So electric cars are a bit different, and then of course the aluminum material they use is different to machine than steel, carbon steel, cast iron or something like that. But this is nothing new to us — we have products on the market that support aluminum machining. Partnerships are also important for digitalization, meeting sustainability challenges and opportunities, and electrification. You cannot do everything by yourself; you need to develop partnerships to ensure you have the right competence plus the right people and suppliers in order to be successful in that business.
MMS: When you speak of the electric vehicle market as being more customized, that's interesting to me. With an internal combustion car, parts like a camshaft look the same for every company. But we haven't figured out the industry-standard way to make an electric car, and the experience you're having is that different producers have different ideas about how they want to make the same types of parts. And you need to respond to that.
Blomqvist: Yeah, exactly. That challenge creates interesting opportunities for improvement in our working processes. To meet them, we’ve grown organically, but also through acquisitions. Growth is also about our people, and something I think is important that we put a lot of attention to is creating a learning culture. This is super important for us to keep innovation and creation in the company. This culture empowers people so they are engaged and feel that they own their own development and can take control of it.
MMS: Can you give me a sense of what a learning culture looks like when it’s implemented? What’s a distinctive element of Sandvik’s learning culture?
Blomqvist: First of all, I think it's very important to lead by example, to show everyone that it's okay to take the time for your own learning. That is what I expect everyone to do, and to make sure that they take responsibility for their own development plan. For example, I'm very open and share with the whole organization that I put 90 minutes every week in my calendar for my own learning.
I hope by doing that, I can inspire everyone and show that it's okay to take time for your own learning. I think this has been well-implemented in the organization, as my management team does the same. Different parts of the organization have learning days; some departments have Learning Fridays when they share their knowledge with each other. They read articles, take online training modules and do a lot of different things related to their job. It is important to upskill in the role you have, figuring out which areas you need to upskill to be more relevant to the company and do your job in even better ways. I think this makes employees feel engaged and empowered.
MMS: What does your 90 minutes of learning look like?
Blomqvist: I do a lot of different things. Last week, my management team and I underwent training about decision making, to make sure we are prepared to delegate important decisions — something easier said than done. But I also took my own training during the weekend when I was working out.
Frequently, I try to find people in the organization. Usually, they reach out to me, and want to share something they believe is important for me to know. Then I have 90 minutes with them, where they’ll teach me about it — the topic can be new products, offers, software, IT systems, production systems or anything like that. So I meet people, I take training together with my team and by myself, and then I also take LinkedIn and other online courses.
Our shop has taken on some new work with small parts in hard metals. To give you an idea on size, our largest roughing tool is a 2.5-mm end mill. Tool life has been the number one issue in this new venture. Can you advise on how to approach this problem?
Whenever you are struggling with tool life, there are two important things to diagnose: 1) When is the tool failing? and 2) Why is the tool failing? Finding out when the tool is failing is important because it sets an expectation and a benchmark for improvements. Finding out why gives us a clue for how to fix it.
Another important thing to assess is why you’re unsatisfied with the tool life. Are you trying to improve surface finish, optimize roughing or maintain dimensional control? Understanding your expectations of a tool in its given task will enable you to properly assess needed improvements. For example, slight wear to a tool’s edge and coating may be perfectly acceptable during a roughing-focused operation, while minimal chipping may be the difference between ship and scrap for a critical surface.
For this application, it is also worth determining what is reasonable. In hard metals, I prefer to see a bare minimum of 30 minutes of tool life for heavy roughing. In your application, I’d like to see closer to one hour of in-cut time. If you find tools running much longer than this, then you may want to shift your expectations, but this is just my experience.
If you assess that a tool isn’t meeting expectations, then you need to diagnose why it is failing. Now is the time to do a study as you run your parts. It’s impossible to understand tool wear after the tool is cooked. Watch the tool progressively wear to see how it starts. If you can stop or reduce the initial wear, the tool will last longer. To do this, you’ll need to stop the cutting at shorter intervals and then track and record the wear at each interval. My suggestion is to set this interval every 10 minutes — perhaps every five minutes if needed. You can keep the tool in the holder, but try to inspect the tool under magnification of some type. The wear should be obvious; you’re not trying to inspect the carbide grain structure or the coating layers, so you don’t need a powerful microscope. A jeweler’s loupe or inexpensive USB microscope will do just fine.
As you inspect the tool at each interval, take note of some key areas of the tool: the corners of the flutes, sharp cutting edges, rake faces and flanks. Do this for all flutes all the way up the tool to the max depth of cut. Record anything you see like chipping, notching, wear marks on the coating and so on.
Once you’ve recorded the findings, put the tool back in the machine and keep running until it is unusable. Ideally, you should stop before it breaks so you don’t lose the evidence in the chip hopper. At this point, record the total tool life in minutes. This will be your bogey for future improvements.
With a better understanding of the when and why, it’s now time to apply some improvements. If you do a quick search, many cutting tool companies provide resources on how to diagnose and correct tool wear. In general, the industry agrees that there are eight common wear mechanisms. For your scenario, I would concentrate on the four which are most common to milling, which are flank wear, built-up edge, chipping and notching.
Flank wear is quite normal, but you can make changes to slow its progression. Built-up edges cause issues because you now have soft metal leading the cut versus the sharp carbide edge. Chipping is the beginning stages of fracture in the tool. Notching is accelerated chipping, usually found where the depth of cut is.
While there can be many possible corrective actions, they all have two themes in common across all the wear mechanisms: managing heat and managing force. In the case of heat, this is related to the surface speed. The more rotational energy (rpm) you apply to the tool to get it through the material, the more frictional energy is created in heat. Ideally, most of the heat goes into the chip, but the tool must endure some. This may also mean properly removing heat with a better CNC Carbide Inserts coolant type or delivery. In the case of cutting forces, too much will break a tool, and if it doesn’t break the tool, it will accelerate chipping over time. Reducing chip load or depth of cut will help. Also remember that carbide can be very brittle; therefore, excessive vibrations must be managed as well. While cutting forces may be reasonable, suppressing the spikes in cutting forces is equally important. Slower entry into the material or into corners, as well as a more robust toolholder, are good ways to lower these spikes. If you specifically see wear on the corners of a tool, you may also consider a corner radius or small chamfer to create some strength on the tool’s weakest point if the part geometry allows.
With a solid understanding of when and why tools fail, you can apply the corrective actions and U Drill Inserts repeat the trials. Keep iterating until you’re satisfied with the tool life. If you still find yourself stuck trying to improve the same cutting tool, use the evidence to guide the selection of your next cutting tool, which may mean using a new geometry or coating.
High-efficiency milling has gotten a lot of attention in recent years as a way to substantially increase metal removal rates with solid carbide end mills on almost any kind of milling machine. With small stepovers, but faster feed rates and deeper depths of cut, this “constant chip load” cutting strategy can dramatically increase roughing efficiency compared to conventional machining.
However, extremely high efficiencies can also be achieved with new indexable cutters at shallow depths of cut, but substantially higher feed rates.
Which is best? To help answer that question, well-known cutting tool manufacturer Kyocera Precision Tools—which makes both types of tools—ran a series of cutting tests to see how each would perform in side-by-side comparisons. Here’s what they found out.
High-efficiency milling is based on the “radial chip thinning” theory that’s been around for a long time. The basic idea is to keep the tool cutting at an ideal chip load. To increase the metal removal rate, the stepover is substantially reduced from the typical 50% of tool diameter, but the feed rate is increased in order to maintain the correct chip thickness.
Because the cutting force is reduced, you can mill with a much larger depth of cut with a solid end mill, plus get better utilization of the full side of the tool. Bottom line, this method can increase metal removal rates by 50% or more compared to conventional roughing, yet still deliver better tool life. What’s great about this process is that it works on virtually any machining center.
The reason that high-efficiency milling wasn’t used more in the past was that toolpaths were difficult to program under differing tool engagement situations such as edge cutting vs cornering inside a pocket. However, several CAM systems today dynamically adjust feeds and speeds for any situation to maintain a constant chip load throughout the cut. Multi-flute cutters have also become available—such as the Kyocera 12 mm 9-flute and 6-flute endmills used in these cutting tests—that are more DNMG Insert efficient simply by getting more edges into the cut per revolution, and that enhances tool life and surface finish.
High feed milling with an indexable tool is pretty much the opposite. Here, you are primarily cutting with the end of the tool where the inserts are, and at a shallow depth of cut. The chip thinning principle is applied here too, though now in the axial direction.
The sheering action of the endmills used in the test cuts is further enhanced by Kyocera’s MFH-Mini cutter design using convex helical inserts that reduce the impact as the edge enters the material, reducing cutting force and vibration. The tool is extremely versatile with the ability to slot, ramp, pocket, face mill and contour. Another benefit is that replacing inserts is less costly compared to solid carbide tools.
The high Lathe Carbide Inserts feed cutting strategy can also be applied on almost any machining center, but because of that, feed rates are much higher, and with a higher chip load per tooth, this process will benefit from a more powerful machine.
How did the two cutting strategies compare? Kyocera ran a series of cutting tests in 4140 steel, 28-32 HRC, on a Haas VF3-YT vertical machining center with a 50-taper, 30 HP spindle. Here are the results:
The first shouldering cut shown in the video below is pretty straightforward. With a 1-inch, 5-insert indexable cutter compared to a 12-mm, 9-flute solid carbide endmill, their respective metal removal rates indicate that the solid tool should take roughly 2.3 times as long to machine the form as the high feed cutter, and the actual time reflected this. Note that the high-efficiency process typically only uses climb milling, which is why you see the tool constantly feeding in one direction.
Cut 2 resulted in the high feed cutter having a shorter cycle time while the metal removal rate showed that the solid tool should have been faster. You can see in the video that the high feed cutter is both climb and conventional milling, so it stays in the cut a higher percentage of the time. Since the solid endmill is only allowed to climb mill, there is a lot of time wasted feeding back around to the start of the cut. However, in both Cut 1 and 2, the solid cutter does provide a significantly better surface finish.
Cut 3 ended up being a much closer race than the metal removal rate calculation predicted. The 12-mm solid tool’s calculated metal removal rate of 2.41 cubic inches per minute was 42% better than the ½ inch indexable cutter’s 1.70 in3, but the cycle time ended up being only 3% shorter. Again, we can attribute this to the high feed tool staying in the cut longer. The high-efficiency tool taking a trochoidal tool path is constantly moving in and out of the cut and results in the cycle time being longer than predicted by the metal removal rate.
Cut 4 confirmed that the 1” high feed cutter showed an advantage that wasn’t as large as the metal removal calculation predicted. In this case, the high feed cutter made a lot of non-cutting moves to return to center and also ended up not maximizing the width of cut due to the pocket geometry. In contrast, the high efficiency toolpath allowed the solid carbide tool to stay in the cut a higher percentage of the time and allowed it to close the time gap.
Kyocera’s conclusions from these tests are that for lighter axial depths and a larger radial depth of cut, the high feed cutter will have an advantage. For heavy axial and light radial cuts, the solid tools will be a better choice. From a programming standpoint, maximizing the time cutting metal and reducing non-cutting moves will naturally reduce cycle times, further providing cost saving benefits. Past experience has shown that both methods (high efficiency and high feed) are ultimately effective in improving tool life over conventional machining methods.
Go to Kyocera Precision Tools for more on indexable tools and solid round tools.
