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I stopped running my rougher at 80% speed last month and my insert life went up, not down
Everyone on my floor swears you have to push carbide hard or you're wasting money, and I bought into that for years. Last month I was running a big batch of 4140 on the Haas VF4, and I decided to try something different. I backed my surface footage down from 650 to about 480 and kept the feed per tooth the same, mostly out of curiosity. My inserts used to last about 3 hours per edge before they started to squeal. Now I'm getting almost 5 hours per edge, and the finish looks better too. My lead guy says I'm babying the tool, but the insert count on my 6 hour run dropped from 4 to 1. The cycle time only went up by about 40 seconds per part, which I'll take any day. I know this goes against what most guys here believe, but has anyone else messed with slowing down instead of speeding up on tougher steels?
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nina_taylor2d ago
Babying the tool" is just smart machining. Push it till it screams, pay twice.
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hannah_wells2d ago
Did you track the chip color when you dropped the speed? I ran the same deal on 4140 for years and always went hot and fast because that is what the old timers drilled into me. Then I tried backing off the sfm and my tool life went way up, just like yours. Turns out I was cooking the edge and calling it productive. Took me a decade to admit the slow way was the cheap way.
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