Mill Cutter Types, Advantages and Applications

Posted on Nov 17, 2020

Mill Cutter

The task of a mill cutter is to remove material from the workpiece. With this in mind, cutters do not consist of one blade. While turning operations performed with a lathe typically involve a single-edge cutting tool, cutters consist of a plurality of blades.

As the cutter rotates relative to the stationary workpiece, it removes material. mill cutters are often made of hard, strong materials that can withstand considerable loads without breaking or otherwise being damaged. For example, it is not uncommon for cutters to have a polycrystalline diamond coating. PCD coated cutters last up to a hundred times longer than their uncoated counterparts.

The downside to using PCD coated mill cutters is that they cannot be used in applications where the temperature exceeds 600 degrees Celsius. In this article, we will teach you everything you need to know about cutters and their properties.

 

Materials Used for Mill Cutters

The most popular materials used for cutters are steel and carbides:

Steel (HSS, FSS)

High-Speed ​​Steel, a tool steel grade, contains several alloy additives to provide better heat and wear response than ordinary carbon steel. As the life cycle of such a mill cutter increases, the cost increases. It is divided into general purpose and special purpose HSS.

It has the following features. Tungsten, chromium, molybdenum, and vanadium alloying elements have higher content, and the hardening hardness can reach HRC62-70, which can keep higher hardness at 6000 ° C.

Good mill cutting edge strength and toughness, strong vibration resistance, can be used for tool making medium cutting speed cutting machines, in the case of less steel machine tool, the use of high-speed mill cutter, still can cut smoothly.

Good process efficiency, forging, machining, and sharpening are relatively easy, and more complex tool shapes can be made. There are still disadvantages compared to carbide materials, such as lower hardness and worse red hardness and wear resistance.

Carbide

Carbide mill cutters are tougher than high-speed steel ones, but their strength is not that good. Higher hardness offers greater protection against wear, but lower strength makes it slightly more vulnerable to cracking and chipping.

It is made of metal carbide, tungsten carbide, titanium carbide, and cobalt-based metal binders in powder and non-metallurgical processes. Its main features are the following. It can withstand high temperatures and maintain good cutting efficiency at around 800-10000C.

When cutting with a carbide mill cutter, the cutting speed can be 4-8 times faster than HSS. Good room temperature abrasion resistance and hardness. Low bending strength, low toughness, not easy to sharpen the blade, very sharp.

 

Types of Mill Cutters

All cutters are characterized by the presence of many grooves, each of which acts as a blade to scrape material off the workpiece. With this in mind, there are different types of mill cutters. For example, an end mill is a type of cutter that has teeth on the tip and sides.

Usable in steel and cemented carbide, they are commonly used in vertical milling operations. The roughing blade is another common form of mill cutter. At the top, the roughing mills have deep slots capable of extracting excess material from the workpiece.

Roughing cutters, also known as Ripper Cutters, are widely used in large-scale production applications.The third type of cutter is the cutter of a ball mill cutter. The ball mill cutter, also known as the ball nose cutter, has a hemispheric design that minimizes strain on the workpiece.

Finally, the side mill cutter is a type of cutter that has teeth on both sides and forwards. Side and face mills have been used for over 200 years.

In fact, back then, they were the most common type of cutter. The milling cutter is an indispensable part of the milling machine. It consists of several blades and is responsible for scraping the workpiece material, thus changing its shape.

 

Differences Between Face Mill Cutters and End Mill Cutters

These are the two most common tools for milling operations, each of which uses a different type of cutter-the end mill cutter and the face mill cutter. The distinction between face milling and face milling is that the face milling cutter uses both the end and the sides of the cutter, while the face milling is used for horizontal cutting.

End Mill Cutter

Typically, these tools have a flat bottom, but not always. Round mill cutters are available as well. End mills are similar to drills in that they can be sliced axially. But the advantage of milling is the chance of side-cutting.

Face Mill Cutter

Face mill cutters can not be cut axially. Instead, the cutting edges are always on the edges of the cutting head. The cutting teeth are replaceable cemented carbide inserts, which prolong the tool life while maintaining good cutting efficiency.

 

What Type of Mill Cutter to Choose?

The selection of the right mill cutter should be based on the machining capabilities of the machine tools, properties of the processed materials, machining procedures, cutting parameters, and other factors. The general rule for selecting CNC cutters is convenient assembly and adjustment, good rigidity, high durability, and precision.

Try to choose a shorter tool holder to improve machining rigidity. The size of the cutting tool should be appropriate to the size of the surfaces of the machined parts. In addition, an end mill is often used to machine the peripheral contour of flat parts, while a carbide end mill cutter can be used to mill flat surfaces.

If you opt for a high-speed mill cutter, you can machine unevenness and concavities. A spiral cutter is an ideal option for rough surface machining or rough hole machining. Finally, a ball cutter, ring cutter, cone cutter, and disk cutter are often used to machine a full profile and a variable angle profile.

 

Mill Cutter Manufacturers on IMTS-Exhibition.com

You can find many mill cutter suppliers on imts-exhibition.com. Just head to our product section or check out our search function to find hundreds of suppliers in our product database.

If you want to learn more about mill cutter related questions and applications make sure to check out our other blog entries. If you are interested in even more detailed manufacturing-related content make sure to check out our MTS Industry Channel. In this show, we introduce new products and trends while visiting manufacturers in their facilities!

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