CNC Tooling

[eli2410]

Originally Posted by MICHAELABICK

My team is ordering its firct cnc mill, a haas TM-2P, and I'm not quite sure what tooling to get. So far this is my list with the different questions I have. I'm thinking of buying a large part of this from Lake Shore Carbide and Maritool:

1/8" - 3/4" End Mills

• Do I need both roughers and finishers? How are the combined roughing and finishing end mills from Lakeshore?
• Which is better: Lakeshore variable flute end mills for aluminum or Maritool aluminum high helix end mills?
• For the maritool high helix finishers, which is the best coating?
• Should I get corner radius end mills in addition to square end mills?
• Should I get reduced shank end mill or regular length? Both?....

Michael, my team has a Techno LC 4896 (I'm 90% sure this is the model). Last year, all of our metal work was cut on this machine, running it sometimes for around 12 hours straight. The stuff that you need, in my mind is:

• 1/8" End Mill Bit that can cut metal
• 1/4" End Mill Bit that can cut metal
• Vacuum table to hold material down flat
• Sacrifice Board
• Metal Screws and such to attach the material to the sacrifice board
• Coolant (we used mist coolant, not sure the brand or anything else. I can get back to you on that. I see that your Haas TM-2P is made for flood coolant)
• CAM software, we used Mastercam last year with success. Our new Computer Integrated Manufacturing teacher has switched us over to EdgeCAM, we'll see how that goes
• Someone with experience. If you get wood-cutting bits (1/8" and 1/4" are fine), which I would recommend getting for training, have someone use the machine all first semester as much as possible to learn it and learn some of the shortcuts and such on the machine

That last one is big, even though it doesn't sound like it. The more people you get to use it during the offseason and the more hours that you have people working it during the offseason, the more parts you will feel comfortable with being cut on it. Also, the more people you have on it, the more efficient your team can be in cutting on it, since one person could run the machine, and the others that can CAM will be making the tool paths.

If anyone has any more questions feel free to ask. I haven't read through the entire thread as of right now, but I'll try to get to it.