Which approach is more efficient in a typical pocketing application?
Have you considered high-feed ramping with an indexable milling cutter as a more efficient, more cost-effective, and less limiting alternative to dynamic/high-efficiency milling with a solid round tool when pocketing or profiling? In this instructional video, we compare the two approaches – and the results may surprise you.
Dynamic milling is all the rage right now. You use a solid carbide end mill and execute a heavy depth of cut using your flutes, and a light radial width of cut with lots of very fast moves to remove your material. It is relatively fast, and it's fairly easy to program. But it involves a pretty expensive tooling choice in a solid carbide end mill, and it's very limited in terms of how deep this application can be utilized.
In many cases, high-feed constant profile ramping with indexable tooling is actually more effective, more cost effective, and much less limiting in terms of the total depth of the part that can be machined. In this video, we demonstrate this approach with both a high-feed end mill and a high-feed shell mill, showing you how to program it and comparing actual cycle times for these three tool options.
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