Guy I sub for told me my feeds were way too conservative and it was costing me money

I was running a job on a Haas VF-2 last month cutting 6061 aluminum, taking 0.050 passes at 30 IPM. Subcontractor I work for walked over and said I was leaving a third of the machine's potential on the table. He showed me he runs the same tool at 80 IPM with 0.100 depth and it finishes faster. I bumped my feeds up to 60 IPM next part and shaved 4 minutes off a 12 minute cycle. Has anyone else had to unlearn being too careful with feed rates?

2 comments

2 Comments

claire_fisher4116d ago

Ngl pushing feeds that hard is just asking for a broken tool and a scrap pile.

lucas49815d ago

Man my buddy Jake burned through three 301s in a single season pushing a 1/2 inch bit to 300 IPM on aluminum. That thing sounded like a dying cat before the spindle finally just locked up mid cut. Took him two weeks to get the replacement part and the job was already late by then. The whole time he's telling me it's fine, just keep going, and I'm like dude you're going to melt the collet too. Ended up replacing the whole Z axis assembly cause the bearings grenaded from the heat. Hard agree, there's a difference between pushing limits and just being reckless with your tooling.