The ability to achieve cost-effective secure milling, together with added process flexibility, is being offered by Ceratizit (
www.ceratizit.com), following the development of its Maxi-Mill 271 indexable-insert milling system.
This offers ‘extremely soft cutting’ and can be used for a wide variety of applications, while producing high-quality surface finishes.
Further advantages offered by the design of the inserts and cutter bodies are enhanced tool life and effective removal of swarf ‘from the hot zone’.
MaxiMill 271, which is optimised for face, slot and chamfer milling, can be specified with either a 45deg approach angle or a 17deg approach angle for high-speed cutting. For maximum application flexibility, there are options of fine- and coarse-pitch cutter bodies.
Ceratizit has also added a 12mm insert system to the range; the advantage of these smaller inserts is that a greater number can be used, which in turn results in longer tool life and higher chip removal rates.
A key feature of MaxiMill inserts is that they have eight usable cutting edges, making them particularly cost-effective; the cutting edge has also been designed to accommodate high cutting speeds, while providing high levels of process security.
Furthermore, extremely tight tolerances ensure that MaxiMill 271 milling cutters ‘produce the best face and concentricity properties’, while the irregular pitch of the insert pockets provides ‘extremely quiet’ machining.
Furthermore, the precision-ground Masterfinish geometry of the indexable inserts ensures that high levels of surface finish are achieved. Inserts are available with geometries that cover ISO categories P, M, K and S.
Ceratizit says that in machining tests run against a comparable cutter from a competitor (on an unalloyed S355 structural steel), a 125mm-diameter MaxiMill 271 face mill achieved a 50% higher feed per tooth, along with a 200% increase in cutting depth.
The volume of swarf removed was increased by 430%, with the MaxiMill 271 achieving a removal volume of 523cm3/min as opposed to 97cm3/min for the competitor tool.