With the UK consolidating its position as a major centre for aerospace manufacturing (worth over £30 billion annually to the UK economy), there is a growing demand for the machining of titanium.

Ceratizit Group and its Team Cutting Tools partnership of tooling specialists (Ceratizit UK & Ireland Ltd — www.ceratizit.com) are offering the group’s latest development in solid-carbide milling cutters — the MonsterMill TCR series, specifically for machining titanium.

When developing these cutters, Ceratizit’s engineers looked closely at chip formation and designed the cutter flutes with a variable and irregular pitch; they also optimised the shape of the chip space to maximise swarf removal.

To improve the cutting performance and tool life, Ceratizit developed a high-performance substrate with extreme toughness and a high level of resistance to flexing under cut, then complemented this with a ‘reinforced cutter core’.

The final element was the use of Ceratizit’s Dragonskin coating technology, which reduces thermal loads and ensures good wear resistance (for the production of medical devices, where coating cross-contamination may be an issue, cutters can be specified without the Dragonskin coating).

MonsterMill TCR cutters are available in diameters from 4 to 20mm — and in a variety of flute lengths and body lengths — to suit applications such as ramping, interpolation and full slot milling.

With the aerospace sector in mind, a wide range of corner radii is available as standard; these range from 0.4 to 6.3mm, depending on cutter diameter.

Torus and ball-nose variants are also available. Furthermore, customers can access 2-D (DXF) and 3-D (STEP and STL) files for the full range of MonsterMill TCR cutters, to aid programming.

Tony Pennington, managing director of Ceratizit UK & Ireland, said: “MonsterMill TCR is part of Team Cutting Tools’ Performance Line of cutters from WNT, in which tools are designed for specific applications and are used where customers are placing high demands on production and require premium products to achieve those demands.

"The continuing success of the UK aerospace and medical sectors will increase pressure on manufacturers to deliver a secure and efficient manufacturing process.

"Developments such as MonsterMill TCR are assisting in that drive for efficiency.”