Part 2 - to my resplining post the other day..... I did this kinda backwards due to my equipment limitations at home, but it appears to have been sucessful nonetheless. I got a killer deal on a dividing head last year missing some small parts so after fabbing those I was excited to finally try it out. I didn't have the "correct" cutter either (this IS a budget operation) so I made due with a 3/8" solid carbide end mill. Contrary to some comments/beliefs the other day the endmill survived just fine on the un-annealed shaft - I just went SLOW and had lube on it full time. Also for the record the hardness is rather deep on these (factory Ford shaft) at approximately 3/16" deep - so it might survive - we'll see. All said and done - after measuring over wires I was within a two thousandth's of my target - so for me - that's plenty good enough. Mom never said it was gonna be easy to be this cheap!
Looks good to me !..........If you want to stop by tomorrow to look at that chunk, I will be home all day, Stan will be bringing over the BSA Hornet about mid morning.................Long live the Bridgeport...............Dave Littleman Lohr
That's great - like I said on part one I thought it could be done without messing with the heat treat.
Looks like to me you did a fine job. Your set up and the finished product is proof. There is a whole lot of stuff in this world, that isnt within .002! Good work!
Nice work man. But one thing, that looks like a coated HSS cutter to me, not a solid carbide one (I could be wrong), but if it is a carbide cutter you shouldn't run coolant unless you can flood the cutter at all times. Carbide doesn't like the heating and cooling and will wear out faster with intermittent coolant. I had to do a spline at work with out the correct cutter, and I sharpened up some HSS to 60 degrees and made a bar to hold it, it worked great.
2manybillz - you were absolutely right! buffaloracer - It's the Variable Speed head -2J tysond - Nope! It's definitely a solid carbide cutter - Not sure which but I think it's either TiN or TiCN coated. Prior to making any cuts on the real shaft - I made some test cuts on a junk shaft - it pretty much laughed at the HSS endmills I had - I did have the right double angle HSS cutter and ruled out using it because the HSS endmill held up so poorly on one test spline. The carbide insert cutters I had worked pretty darned good but all my inserts had too large a nose radius which is why I ended up using the endmill. I'm gonna keep an eye out for the right cutter at the machinery surplus places.
-***anium Nitride (TiN) is gold-colored, while ***anium Carbide (TiCN) is a darkish grey. Either way the coating is basically just a surface lubricity treatment- yes, it's very hard, but it's also only microns thick. The strength to resist the forces of cutting the hardened steel comes from the micrograin carbide of the mill itself. For 90% of us home-shop guys, the TiN or any other coating is just a sales ploy to get us to pay a few bucks more per drill bit, end mill or saw blade. Doc.
Thanks for the info Doc! I sifted through my stash of end mills and remember seeing those two references - but admit until now I didn't know the difference. That would make the one I used a TiN coated Carbide Endmill. AS far as paying MORE for coated endmills - that ***UMES I paid for these Actually a bud of mine donated a handfull of carbide endmills - I try to save them for special jobs like this.
-Actually, I put that part in as a jab to those rodders that, when faced with some tough drilling job (opening up an indexing hole in a leaf spring, drilling hardened bolts for safety wires, etc.) will buy whatever Home Depot has, that has the words "***anium" or "heavy duty" or other buzzwords on the bubble-pack. Fact of the matter is, most of the "***anium" tools you buy these days (unless you're buying specialty cutters from a machinist outfit) are just standard HSS (high speed steel) with literally less than .00005" ***anium nitride vapor-deposited on it. With the right bit- I have a drawerful- I can drill through a file or turn the shank of an endmill down in the lathe. No matter how hard a part or tool is, there's always something harder, so it's just a matter of picking the correct tool for the job. Your axle was tough, but not that tough. Probably only the high 30s or low 40's Rockwell C. A micrograin carbide endmill will be in the high fifties. No sweat, really. Oh, and I thought the flange-end stand/holder was clever. Kudos. Doc.
Actually, most carbide is in the 75-90 Rc range. Softer grades are used for interupted cutting (milling applications) harder grades for noninterupted turning applications. TiN (***anium nitride) and TiCN (***anium carbonitride) can both be yellow in color. It depends on who did the coating. BTW excellent job on the splines, they look great!
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