High efficiency machining in stainless steel

[alloy]

I was running these today and was kinda bored, my other two machines had long cycle times and I thought people here might like to see a vid I made of cutting some stainless parts. We have been using the high efficiency machining for a few months now and its dramatically cut the cycle times when we use it.

The material is 15-5 and I'm using a 5/16" 4 flute carbide coated end mill with a .03 radius. The RPM is 5600 and feed rate is 88 IPM. Th step over is about .02 depending on if its a profile cut or a pocketing cut.

You can't really hear the cutting because of the air blast we use to clear the chips away, and excuse my finger in the middle of the vid, I was losing my grip on my phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lwOHJ-EYKs&feature=youtu.be

 

[Pat of TN]

Not able to watch the video, but out of curiosity - what software do you all use?

At where I work, they use SolidCAM, which has what they call I-Machining. It makes some pretty nutty toolpaths, but man, they fly... of course, using only Accupro and MA Ford end mills... stainless, 4140 PH, etc.. Coming fresh from school where we had the oddball chinese carbide end mill and mostly HSS, it's mind-boggling.

 

[alloy]

We are using HSM Cad that runs with Solid works.

The only thing I don't like about it is the code it generates. It's not meant to be hand edited. To do a facing pass it generates about 30 lines. Does a lead in just to go to Z zero, face, and then leads out. Takes me forever to edit a program if our programmer is busy, and he always is now. They told us this week we are 6000 hours back logged in spindle time, and every week we are falling more behind, and we have 12 VMC's. Job security I guess.