Making a Milling tool Arbor

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Darren:
Thanks guys,
I though it would be a worthy exercise for us to get to know each other a little (not you, the lathe :doh:)

Bogs, yeah, frightening init ..... :coffee:

Darren:
Adev,

It's really hard to advise without being there.

You will have a lot of variables, the material itself, tooling (size/shape/condition) condition of the actual lathe (bearings/leadscrew/ways/chuck/slides) and more, that's just the basics.

All the finishes you see in this post are from the lathe and cutter, no emery finishing or polishing was done except for burrs on corners. But you have to remember this is mostly down to the steel properties.
I find the harder a steel is the better it finishes. Same goes for alloy.
The threading was done with a HSS cutter as I don't have a carbide type yet, this was not the best choice here but it's ok, better than the picture portrays.

I used a worn tip shown in the rougher areas for bulk removal and a new tip were you see it shiny ... :dremel:

Your issues may just be down to the material itself?

I picked the milling cutter up along the way somewhere, the seller threw it in with a bunch of HSS cutters as he didn't have an arbour for it ....

Darren:
Thought I'd better try it out now that I've made it :ddb:

This is a piece of cast steel from a steam engine basket .... don't ask ....

One evening a couple of weeks ago I had a go at it on the mill with a HSS cutter. Although it was tough it cut ok, but the cutters didn't last long before the edge was gone.
It was taking me hours to try to square this lump up.

So tonight I attacked it with the tipped cutter. This flew through it once I'd found the settings.
Tried 600rpm, no good, lots of vibration.
1000 rpm much better
1400 and it was now ploughing through this cast like butter.

Flipped it over and took a full 50mm face cut in one pass at 0.100", I think this is about the limit here, 0.050" sounded much better. This is cast steel though so ordinary steel should be much better.

It's not a brilliant finish, only the shaper can do better in my workshop with this material. But as a bulk remover this is the man that can, as Bogs says .... :lol:

Be interesting to see what it does to ordinary steel ...

Darren:
BTW, this is very fast , really fast .... and the lump stays cold unlike when using HSS which gets it steaming.
Not good when machining this stuff as it can work harden in an instant. Then it's really tough to do anything with.

Brass_Machine:
Very very nice! both the work, tooling and lathe!

Eric

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