Here come the Titans!

The Walter Prototyp competence brand has engineered the Duo Protostar Ti40/Ti45 solid carbide shank mill. The Ti40 is a roughing tool with internal cooling, while the Ti45 is a finishing tool. The Ti40 marked a new era in the engineering of Ti processing tools. A project completed in collaboration with Airbus produced a welcome result for cutting tools: the Ti40 manages twice the cutting volume in roughing operations with Ti6Al4V. Until then, the maximum cutting volume had been around 80cm3/minute (Vc = 25m/minute), achievable with the use of HSS-E tools having a diameter of 32mm. At Airbus, this value was accomplished as far back as the mid-1990s, but since this time they had not been able to make any headway ?for productivity managers, this is a long time with no improvement. The new generation of solid carbide tools raises the benchmarks significantly to 160-200cm3/minute (Vc = 50-60m/minute) with a tool diameter of 25mm. The Ti40/Ti45 are made from an extremely tough and relatively vibration-immune carbide. Further trials with material Ti5553 were conducted by Walter specialists in their own technology centre. The aim was to determine how the new generation of solid carbide tools would cope with it. The test piece had a tensile strength of 1,400 N/mm2 and a Brinell hardness of 430. The test tool was a Protostar Ti40 with 16mm diameter and z = 4. As expected, the cutting data had to be significantly further reduced by comparison with Ti6Al4V. For various types of use, the following recommendations were ascertained for a tool diameter of 16mm: Slot milling (ae = 16mm, ap = 8mm): Vc = 25m/minute, fz = 0.06mm Side milling, roughing (ae = 4mm, ap = 8mm): Vc = 50m/minute, fz = 0.08mm Side milling, finishing (ae = 0.3mm, ap = 50mm): Vc = 100m/minute, fz = 0.12mmZoom Lebron Soldiers IX 9