Please read and make suggestion- Metal Cutting Thread

itsme_Bernie

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Please read and make suggestion- Metal Cutting Thread(s)

I personally find it *incredibly* valuable to learn from more seasoned machinists (or us home shop guys when we get lucky:) ) how to make pretty/accurate cut specific metals, and at least successfully cut challenging ones.

I am often dying for this info when about to put cutter to metal on the lathe or mill- and at those times it requires a lot of digging through posts to find tidbits where and there... OR, bugging everyone with "how do I cut this" when people have already thoughtfully and carefully posted advice already.

My thinking is, if ANYONE finds info useful or interesting, **even if they are not the original poster**, they should copy and paste that post to the proper thread. Maybe even start the post with the name of the metal, like "12L14 Steel".
If the name of the original poster is appropriate to post, it should be included, unless that person does not want "credit" or "blame" :)

We would would want as much info as possible, but ANY info would help- at least the basics like-

- depth of cut,
- Feed - like feed-gearbox setting (to the best of knowledge)?
- RPM/work diameter (effectively SFM)
- type of cutter... (Rake, angles if known)
- ** REALLY great to include a pic of the cutter (especially if HSS ground) and pic of the finished cut, bad lighting or not!
- etc...

I hope this thread has some legs- I am putting it in "Metal Finishing".
Sorry to put you on the spot here Dave :) , but I am talking about posts like this:


CaptDave posted to Shawn's 4-Jaw thread:

"12L14 is generally used in screw machine products, hardware and Fastners. We use it for special hardware we build and it machines beautiful. If your turning it use a sharp high positive inserts and for finishing, use a DOC that is minimum of 2X your tool nose radius. It really likes to be cut hard and fast."


If we could keep this thread going, couldn't we search out that information specifically? Or should we start a thread for each metal?

What do you guys think?


Bernie
 
I would tend to think each class of metal should probably have a separate thread. Because stainless has several flavors that share some traits while not sharing others. Mild steel, Aluminum, stainless, and exotic alloys should probably be enough. Each different flavor of a particular metal should be a separate reply in it's corresponding parent metal thread. That would be an excellent resource and easy to maintain and update. The format should probably be standardized to insure each reply has usefull info in roughly the same order every time too. Lots of possibilities and they could be housed in the resources section of the forum, or maybe in the files or database section if we have them available. I'll pass your Ideas to Nelson and Tony to see what they think and if they are interested , how they want to implement it too. Thanks for the great idea!!!!

Bob
 
Great Bob!

Thanks! I can scour my computer archive (have some searching to do) for some that I had saved over the years. I will post those too!

Bernie
 
I agree with Bob and Bernie in that it would be useful to have a separate category for "Materials" which might have a thread for each major material.
The threads would be named by the various grades of steel, aluminum, brasses / bronzes, plastics, etc.
Each of these threads could then include things like:
1) sources of materials (suppliers, on-line sources, etc.)
2) properties of the various materials (strength, hardness, machineability, resistance to corrosion, etc.)
3) machining techniques
4) perhaps welding, brazing, joining properties of the material (although I believe there is already a category for welding topics)
5) finishing, preserving, polishing, etc.

This information is already available in the many reference books such as Machinery's Handbook, but unless you are experienced in knowing where to look it can be a daunting task to search these out. Furthermore, unless you have been through a trade school or have an ME degree, many of the terms and measurement units can confuse a new user.

I agree that it would be handy to have a summary of information here on the forum - especially handy to have member's experience with various machining and finishing techniques on large and small machines.

Terry S.
 
I support the idea of a new area for this topic. I find Bob's suggestion appealing -that is, having each class subdivided. A template could easily be "borrowed" from a place like www.speedymetals.com where the product page is divided among "Steel", "Alloy", "Stainless Steel", "Brass" etc...

Ray
 
I support the idea of a new area for this topic. I find Bob's suggestion appealing -that is, having each class subdivided. A template could easily be "borrowed" from a place like www.speedymetals.com where the product page is divided among "Steel", "Alloy", "Stainless Steel", "Brass" etc...

Ray

Exactly! I've been digging in my hard rive off and on this morning!




Bernie
 
First, and a newbie, I love the idea.
As a forum traveler I will play devils advocate and say that unless this can be HEAVILY moderated, it will quickly turn in to q-a-q-a-c-c-c (question-answer-comment) type of threads and be less than ideal.

So, a suggestion:
Have each thread have a first post that is an over all summary/tech sheet for the material being discussed.
As questions get posted and answered, they are reviewed (presumably by one of the old timers that knows their stuff) and the
information needed for the question gets added to the summary page, then those posts are deleted (to minimize bloat).
Maybe even make the question-answer threads separate from the summary thread to help keep things organized.

After a bit of time most questions should have been answered in the summary, and the 'work' of upkeep will decrease.
All of this is just my $0.20, I will enjoy and continue to read/post reguardless!

Entropy is a terrible force in an open forum if you a really interested in providing concise information.
 
Re: Please read and make suggestion- Metal Cutting Thread(s)

I agree with most of what you say Dave- but if I know I succeeded in a certain procedure, and can answer questions I wouldn't have even known, the discussion helps me AND the person asking when we sort it all out.

So maybe things only get posted into that thread when we figure it all out? I want the quality to be high, but don't want to make it into that much work for anyone. These forums are already a lot of work to run.


Bernie
 
Every type of forum I've joined that's related to some sort of field of knowledge I always wish that all the little tidbits of wisdom that are scattered throughout the forums and threads could be consolidated into categories of searchable information. So, not just metal cutting but everything we see questions for. Wouldn't it be great if every time a subject is discussed in detail, or a useful question is answered that the final result could be archived in a (maybe not so frequently) asked questions area?

Then I resolve to undertake such a compilation for my own use, and then never do it. LOL Lots of work, but it would be great to have. I wonder if we could add tags to a particular post so we could search on it? That allows single word searches without over-taxing a search routine. Just talking off the top of my head. Maybe I need medication. :)
 
Every type of forum I've joined that's related to some sort of field of knowledge I always wish that all the little tidbits of wisdom that are scattered throughout the forums and threads could be consolidated into categories of searchable information. So, not just metal cutting but everything we see questions for. Wouldn't it be great if every time a subject is discussed in detail, or a useful question is answered that the final result could be archived in a (maybe not so frequently) asked questions area?

Then I resolve to undertake such a compilation for my own use, and then never do it. LOL Lots of work, but it would be great to have. I wonder if we could add tags to a particular post so we could search on it? That allows single word searches without over-taxing a search routine. Just talking off the top of my head. Maybe I need medication. :)

That's true Mike- but I have seen it done a few times- someone did it on some Yahoo forums like the South Bend Lathe forum, Atlas 618 forum (file was names "atlas618gems" if I recall).

If there was a way to make it less labor intensive, and maybe just editable by knowledgable people for length etc.

Hmm... Am I correct in saying that this sounds Wiki-like in structure?

Bernie
 
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