Hi, Jason with Tormach. We've partnered with our friends at SolidWorks to be
part of their manufacturing cell at SolidWorks World. We had our PCNC 440
on site to perform the final operation of a billet shift knob. We built a real
quick, sixth position fixture to quickly process the parts at the show. We needed
some set of parts to verify the program in the fixture, so I jumped on our 15 L
Slant-Pro Lathe and knocked a few out. So let's talk about the part and how we
processed this project.
Parts were made from 6061 aluminum and finished at a two
and a half inch diameter. And the parts shape was really similar to a door
handle. On an aesthetic part like this I always try to finish everything with one
tool. I don't like to try to blend the two different tools together. You always
get a blend line. So I always try to process the parts in a way that allows
me to finish everything at the same time. On this shift knob it was a pretty
straightforward process. I could chuck it on the backside of
the lathe, and turned everything except the top face. This feature will be
finished up on the PCNC 440 with the sheer hog face mill and then engraved
with a SolidWorks logo so we loaded the stock up into some steel soft jaws and
got to work we roughed the bulk of the material out with a CCM t 432 insert I
know see see what late tooling is another language that you're gonna get
to learn on your machinist journey let's do a quick overview of this the four
letters tell you what shape the insert is the first C represents an 80 degree
diamond the second letter is going to tell us what the clearance angle of the
insert is this is a C as well and represents a positive seven degree
clearance angle on the insert the M is the tolerance clasp the insert is made
to and the T means that the insert is one-sided so the four letters define the
shape of the insert but what do the numbers mean these define the size of
the insert so the letters of the shape and the numbers are the size the first
number represents the diameter of the inscribed circle to visualize this draw
a circle that is tangent to all four edges of the insert and measure the size
in this case of for each number represents one-eighth of an inch so we
have four which means it is an inscribed circle size of a half-inch diameter the
second number is the thickness of the insert this is in 1/16 and
increments our answer is a three so we have a 3/16 thick insert the final
number is the corner radius this is defined in one 64th increments we have
to which means we have a 260 force or a 1/32 inch radius I know this can sound
complicated but keep working with it and you'll have it time before you know it
for more information on this we have a lathe cooling guide it has a nice chart
and all the product descriptions to make this a lot easier for you please check
the description to low for a download link so let's get back to cutting we're
off the front side of this part out with a hundred-thousand set the cut at 700
service feet per minute and a feed rate of 10 thousands per revolution so every
time the part makes one revolution the table moves forward 10 thousandths of an
inch we left stock on the handle portion on the curved surfaces here to come back
with a finishing tool but we did finish the major diameter of the threads with
this same insert the second step was to put a thread relief on and rough out the
backside of the part this was caught with a GT n3 insert which is a hundred
twenty thousand wide grooving and parting tool when roughing the backside
I made sure to create some clearance for my finished tool I wanted to finish up
the entire radius in one shot so I went deep enough to have clearance but I also
left as much stock as possible to keep the part nice and rigid while machining
to finish to the body of the part off I used a button cutter this is a six
millimeter diameter insert these work great for finishing the large radius
allows you to feed the insert fast and still maintain a great surface finish as
you can see in the footage the part came off the machine looking beautiful all
that was left now is to cut the thread and to part it off I didn't want to drop
the part off from the Chuck and risk the imaging and as it bounced around in the
machine so I left about a hundred and fifty thousand sub stock and then I just
broke the part off my hand as you can see this was a little bit difficult to
break off so I could have cheated the passes down a little if I wanted to make
it easier but better safe than sorry when you're just making one or two
pieces so here it is some quick setup parts to verify fixture design and
programs you can see everything came out looking really nice we're able to load
up the entire fixture run all six parts and everything just worked really well
and everything ran great at the show for us thanks for watching hope you guys
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