Aerospace end mills take off

If the name wasn't specific enough, the RF100Ti Aircraft range of end mill tools from Guhring is a line of high performance end mills for cutting high tensile titanium alloys and special materials that are specified in the aerospace sector.

The new milling series is ideal for slotting, ramping, plunging, trochoidal milling and orbital drilling, which means this new innovation provides further benefits for the industry.

Specifically developed for cutting the stainless steels and titanium alloys commonly machined in this sector, the RF100 Ti Aircraft is a solid carbide range of tools with the choice of Guhring's TiAlN Super-A coating or the new Zenit coating technology that easily cuts through the material with its reduced adhesion characteristics.

The four flute end mill series combines the choice of these two coatings with a geometry design that has been precisely developed for extending tool life, material removal rates and overall efficiency whilst reducing cutting forces with its swarf evacuation characteristics.

To extend the tool life of the RF100 Ti Aircraft, the coating technology combines with an optimised corner radius that ranges from 0.5mm to 5mm. Available in diameters of 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20 and 25mm, the smaller tool diameters have the choice of six corner radii from 0.5 to 2mm whereas the 16, 20 and 25mm tools have a choice of eight corner radii from 0.5 to 5mm. The face of the end mill also has a particularly large chip pocket and web thinning that permits reliable plunging and orbital drilling whilst rapidly disposing swarf from the cutting area.

To retain such high swarf removal characteristics on all types of milling operation, the RF100Ti Aircraft has a flute spacing that has been optimised with a deeper flute geometry in front of the cutting area. This feature aids chip removal and prevents re-cutting whilst a 38° helix angle further enforces the message that swarf is accelerated away from the contact point.

At the top of the flute, Guhring engineers have applied an optimised transition angle that aids stability when conducting heavy material removal. With a maximum cutting length of 13mm on the smallest 6mm diameter tool and 45mm on the 25mm diameter series, the flutes have been ground to the optimum length for machining such difficult alloys.

All these features have been put to the test and the new RF100 Ti Aircraft has demonstrated that it can rough machine TiAl6V4 grade titanium at a Q rate of 36cm³/minute with a tool life in excess of 135 minutes.

Guhring www.guhring.co.uk