I make my own product and some of the parts get anodized (red) and then laser marked. Trying to get the best surface finish on a shell milled surface. On a lathe I'd use diamond tooling or a larger radii and fine feed rate. I'm milling parts approximately 2" -4" wide using several face mills, all with somewhat marginal results.
I have one cutter that uses APKT inserts, an old Kennametal cutter that uses LFEW (a high positive rake insert) which I have in corner radii ranging from .015" to .250". I do have a 4" Ingersoll cutter that I found diamond inserts for, but by the time I mount it on a 40 taper holder and try to hand load it (old knee mill without tool changer) it's so heavy that it's not something you want to take in and out for each part. I have resorted at times, to leaving the facing op for last and put the parts back in the machine and just skim cut them with that tool, but I don't really want to do that when the parts get harder to hold and relocate.
Only taking .005-.010" depth of cut, usually running 3000-5000 rpm (all my machine has) and 20-50 ipm. I don't know if these pics will show very well, but just wondered what folks are doing.... I come from an aerospace background and it was flat within, or a specific finish, 32 or 64, type of thing and visual didn't mean squat. Now I don't care so much what it checks, but it's gotta look purdy....
Pics in next post I guess....
I have one cutter that uses APKT inserts, an old Kennametal cutter that uses LFEW (a high positive rake insert) which I have in corner radii ranging from .015" to .250". I do have a 4" Ingersoll cutter that I found diamond inserts for, but by the time I mount it on a 40 taper holder and try to hand load it (old knee mill without tool changer) it's so heavy that it's not something you want to take in and out for each part. I have resorted at times, to leaving the facing op for last and put the parts back in the machine and just skim cut them with that tool, but I don't really want to do that when the parts get harder to hold and relocate.
Only taking .005-.010" depth of cut, usually running 3000-5000 rpm (all my machine has) and 20-50 ipm. I don't know if these pics will show very well, but just wondered what folks are doing.... I come from an aerospace background and it was flat within, or a specific finish, 32 or 64, type of thing and visual didn't mean squat. Now I don't care so much what it checks, but it's gotta look purdy....
Pics in next post I guess....