Quickgrind (www.quickgrind.com) — renowned for its high-quality carbide cutting tools — has worked with CNC machining-technology specialist TTL (www.ttl-solutions.com) and tool-path specialist VoluMill (www.volumill.com) to cut milling cycle times by over 75% while retaining tool integrity and performance.

Ross Howell, managing director of Tewkesbury-based Quickgrind Ltd, says: “To improve the profitability of a customer’s business, we do much more than provide the right tools; we look at the whole picture from the customer’s point of view and come up with a total solution to meet the challenges that we see. Often, that solution involves teaming up with other companies and their complementary technologies.

“One of the challenges that we overcame jointly with TTL and VoluMill was to deal effectively with 316 stainless steel, which is notoriously difficult to cut.

“We expect our combined solution to be particularly useful in industries like aerospace, automotive and F1, as well as pharmaceuticals, oil and gas.”

The test involved milling at a spindle speed of 4,775rev/min and a surface speed of 180m/min, with a 30mm depth of cut and a feed rate of 4,870mm/min. The traditional cycle time was cut from 17min 35sec to 4min 8sec. At the end of five cycles, the 12mm-diameter Quickgrind cutting tool was still ‘performance-ready’.

The test was carried out with an 18-year-old Bridgeport machine, which shows that major productivity improvements are possible even on older platforms.