Titanium is a widely used material in the aerospace and medical industries due to its exceptional properties. Despite its popularity, titanium is notorious for being one of the most difficult materials to machine, and tales of broken tools and ruined workpieces are abundant.

Titanium can produce long chips that can easily damage the tooling and mark the surface of the workpiece. Furthermore, long, thin chips are not ideal as they do not assist with transferring heat away from the work zone. Tooling and tool paths that allow for the creation of smaller and thicker chips are, therefore, ideal when machining titanium.

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Face Mills: These cutters supply blades designed to shape and form the visible facing of a metal part. Typically, these heavy-duty cutting tools use disposable cutting blades which manufacturers replace as they wear out. Face mills can transform the texture of a surface.

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Choosing the right tool path when machining titanium is as critical as choosing the correct tool. Tool paths that ensure constant cutter engagement in the workpiece are absolutely necessary when machining titanium. When cutting out a slot, a tool path that incorporates a trochoidal pattern will reduce the amount of time that any one flute is engaged with the material, which helps limit heat build-up. Arcing the cutting tool into and out of the workpiece helps reduce shock and abrupt motion that can severely damage tools.

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Slot Drills: These end mills strongly resemble corner radius end mill cutters. Equipped with at least one cutting tooth on the end permitting “plunging milling”, and fluted sides designed to allow the cutter to penetrate through material, they permit rapid slot cutting.

Due to titanium’s affinity to other elements, it cannot be found naturally occurring and therefore requires complex and energy-intensive processes to refine it. This means that it is very expensive compared to other common materials. Another major disadvantage of titanium is its degree of difficulty when machining processes are required.

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If the machine allows, increasing the feed rate means that the tool spends less time in a specific area and therefore has less time to allow heat to build up and work hardening to affect the cutting edge of the tool.

The main advantages of titanium as a manufacturing material are that it is highly corrosion resistant, has exceptional bio-compatibility and has the best strength-to-weight ratio of any metal. These qualities make it an especially sought-after material in the aerospace and medical industries.

Industrial engineers have developed a wide array of different types of milling cutters. A few of the most frequently used today include these broad categories:

Since industrial end mills must cut through metal, these cutters typically consist of very strong, hard materials. They may utilize high strength steel, steel alloys containing high percentages of cobalt, cutters coated with powdered metal cobalt, cutters with tungsten carbide tips and even solid carbide. Some manufacturers rely upon end mills specially fabricated to accept different interchangeable types of durable cutting blades. Inserts composed of specialized ceramic or diamond cutters assist some end mill operations, for instance.

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This article will help demystify the challenges encountered when machining this material and provide some insight into techniques that can improve titanium machining success rates.

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Widely employed during machining in industrial settings, end mills enable manufacturers to shape and form slots and pockets within work pieces to meet specified parameters. These cutting tools remove material from the work piece, offering great assistance to machinists as they fashion metal molds and dies. Manufacturers have devised a great variety of useful end mills.

Ball End Cutters: These milling cutters cut away a specific, measured radius inside slots or grooves. The blade ends in a rounded tip making it suitable for use in the production of molds and dies which should not display sharp 90 degree angles.

Titanium is prone to work hardening, namely, as the material is cut, it becomes harder and, therefore, even more abrasive to tooling. A constant feed ensures that cutting work-hardened material is kept to an absolute minimum.

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Hollow Mills: These milling cutters formed in hollow thick-walled tubular dimensions contain interior cutting blades. They may help trim projections on complexly shaped work pieces, for example.

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Course Profile End Mills: This specialized type of roughing end mill removes significant amounts of metal as cost-effectively as possible. Since the cutter can withstand repeated heavy use well, it enjoys popularity in busy machining environments.

End mills enjoy popularity in metal parts fabrication settings because they expedite the creation of uniform slots and pockets during the machining process. They ultimately facilitate the assembly of parts. More efficient, less wasteful, manufacturing results from their use.

Like all other metals, titanium has numerous different alloys available, each with its own special set of properties and behaviour. Here is a summary of the different types:

During former centuries, milling sometimes involved grinding materials placed beneath heavy rotating stones or cutting blades. With industrialization, fabricators mounted milling cutter blades on rotating spindles, allowing greater control over the milling process during mass production. Milling cutters today occur in a variety of sizes, shapes and dimensions, ranging from inserts used in hand held tools to cutting blades mounted within huge stationary machines. The milling process often occurs in conjunction with CNC automated production.

A robust machine tool is critical to successfully machine titanium. The ideal titanium milling machine needs to be rigid with spindles that can operate at low spindle speeds and high torque. This helps absorb vibration and reduce chatter during the cut, which is a common problem when machining titanium.

Titanium is certainly not a straightforward material to work with, but its material properties mean that it is here to stay. With the correct machine tool and machining strategy, titanium can be cut with ease. Contact a Kingsbury representative for expert advice on machine tools and strategies that were specifically designed for milling materials like titanium.

Corner Radius End Mill Cutters: This precision cutting tool uses a specified radius on the tip and fluted sides. Manufacturers employ corner radius end mills to cut away material rapidly for the preparation of molds and dies with slots or pockets fitting specific diameters.

Titanium is an insulator, and therefore the heat generated during the cutting operation tends to stay near the cutting tool. This heat blunts the tool, which in turn creates more heat, and the cycle continues until the tool fails completely. An obvious solution to excessive heat is more coolant. Blasting the work zone and tool with 10% concentrated coolant from a high-pressure supply will ensure that the contact area is kept cool and any heat-carrying chips can be washed away.

Numerous applications exist in virtually every industry for end mills. These cutters greatly assist the production of dies and molds. They also promote easier assembly of manufactured equipment across diverse sectors by enabling manufacturers to form and shape pockets and slots of specific dimensions.

Carbide-tipped tools with a PVD coating are the best suited tool for cutting titanium. Newer, more advanced tool coatings are also available such as TiAIN (Titanium Aluminum Nitride). Titanium is a relatively springy material, and as such, a sharp tool is absolutely critical. Blunt tools will rub the surface and cause chatter.

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Titanium is known as being a tough material to work with and is very sensitive to a number of factors. Listed below are some of the key challenges with machining titanium.

Milling constitutes a machining process widely used in manufacturing operations, including woodworking and metal working. During the milling of metal parts, a fabricator shapes and forms a work piece using rotary cutters to remove material selectively. This process frequently contributes to the production of industrial metal components. Today, it usually occurs in conjunction with automation, especially within high volume production environments.

Numerous types of milling cutter tools assist the manufacturing process. All of them will remove material from a work piece in a rotary fashion. In the past, machinists typically classified milling cutters as either horizontally or vertically oriented cutting tools. Unlike drills, which also remove material from work pieces, milling cutters generally do not move forward along the cutting axis in only a single direction, but instead operate in a perpendicular direction to the axis of the cut.

End Mills: These milling cutters possess teeth across both an end cutting face and the sides of the cutter. They typically help shape and form cavities, slots and pockets.

A broad spectrum of different specialized end mills assist metal parts fabrication today. Manufacturers can locate highly specialized end mills specially suited for specific types of milling tasks during machining, for instance. Some popular varieties of machining end mills include:

Roughing End Mill Cutters: These tools remove large quantities of material from a work piece. Within a specified period of time, the blades make extensive cuts into the metal. They produce a coarsely textured surface inside slots or pockets.

Another critical part of the system is the correct workholding. With the workpiece clamped securely, you can remove vibration from the process allowing better cutting data to be achieved. Many titanium parts are thin in section due to the nature of their use, using bespoke workholding solutions for the final operations will yield better results, often allowing greater access and support to the component.

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For turning applications, the position and pressure of the coolant is crucial. With the right application, much higher surface speed and metal removal rates can be achieved. The only downside to this is potential material being redeposited onto the surface of the part. This can be overcome by planning the cutting strategy and also reducing the coolant pressure for the final finish cuts.

Milling may occur using a wide variety of tools, ranging from manual tools to computer-assisted CNC machinery. The use of sophisticated computer number controlled fully automated equipment has become more widespread during high volume production in recent years. Ensuring adequate lubrication during high speed milling remains an important consideration, since the operation of end mills in industrial settings generates a lot of heat. Sometimes companies will automate many machining operations, but still conduct some specialized milling processes by hand; the nature of the metal component and the desired tolerances of a part may impact production operations.