Tool Life

Chris Mills, project manager for aerospace for Sandvik Coromant, said the average life for tooling in machining aerospace components is 3 min to 15 min in roughing operations, and 20 min to 30 min for finishing operations.

However, Mills said that planning cuts so that the tool “rolls” into the cut and keeps chip sizes small can extend tool insert life by as much as six times.

Mills spoke at Mazak Corp. (U.S.A.)’s Manufacturing Technologies for Global Competitiveness conference held in December.