KYOCERA SGS Precision Tools Group
KYOCERA SGS Precision Tools Group
So, you’re saying that the answer is never the tool is wrong. Absolutely not. More often than not, it’s not the tool.
Hey, everybody and welcome back to another episode of Tips and Chips. My name is Andy Greaves. I am the East Coast Applications Engineer for Kyocera SGS. And today we have a special guest, Ian Sandusky.
Ian, like to introduce yourself to everybody.
Thanks very much for having me.
Yeah, you’re welcome.
Yeah, my name is Ian Sandusky. I own Lakewood Machine & Tool in New Market, Ontario. We’ve been in business for 38 years this year. We do everything from defense electronics to tractor parts and a little bit of everything in between. So, yeah, and then I’m also a contributor with Practical Machinist. So, I get to go to cool places like this and check stuff out.
Awesome. Meet a lot of really cool people. How did you enjoy the tour this morning?
It was nuts. It was absolutely fantastic. That place is very, very impressive.
When we’re at the shop floor, when we’re at the spindle, one of the first things that gets blamed if there’s an issue is the tool. But here to talk about it today is to why that’s not always the case. And I’m sure you’ve come across this quite a lot.
It’s definitely not an uncommon scenario that when, you know, my guys are running something or I’m running something and the cut’s not going the way you want it to or the finish isn’t coming out the way you want it to or you’re not getting the tool life, the first thing people do is say, “Why do we spend money on this tool? It’s not the right tool for the job. It’s this. It’s that.” And the amount of times that we’re proven wrong on that is at this point not surprising, but it originally was quite surprising.
Why do you think the initial reaction is to always point your finger at the tool first?
Well, I think a lot of the reasons that becomes the first kind of contender for the problem is because it’s the easiest thing to change. Right. You can come in one day and run one end mill and the next day run another, you know, and as soon as there’s an issue with that one tool with the cut, that’s when, “Oh, it’s the tool’s fault.” Right?
We come across it more often than not, and there’s usually another cause that’s why there’s an issue. You know, we see it with tool holders, with work holding, coolant delivery is another one. Material variation. I’m sure you see it a lot, you know, with the way the market is currently at the moment, material is getting harder to find, it’s getting more expensive. And different suppliers, there is some variation in that material.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we do a lot of troubleshooting with jobs in my shop, and we’ve kind of learned that first of all, when you’re troubleshooting, only change one variable at a time. So, if something’s going wrong in there, and I change the tool, the holder, the draw bar set, and the work holding, even if it works right the next time, I have no idea why that didn’t work.
Which one fixed it?
Absolutely. So, changing one thing at a time always does it. And when you start at the spindle, basically work down. You know what I mean? Is it the work holding? Is it that?
What’s the number one thing you see when people come to you and say, it’s the tool. If you had to say like 80% of it is this right here, what is it?
I’d say the biggest contributor to that is probably the setup.
Really?
Yeah, whether it’s held in a vise and it’s hanging off the end, or whether it’s not really well supported, or if the tool holder is like way longer than it needs to be, that is a really common one.
Big time. Somebody’s trying to run a big 3/4 inch end mill in a CAT 40 holder. It’s, you know, it’s a great idea, and I love that people want to try it, but it’s all about, you know, it’s that entire system, right? And it eats the setup as a whole, where people might be trying to run a seven flute 3/4 inch tool in a CAT 40 holder with 4 inches of stickout, it’s just not going to work.
Yeah, you’re not going to get the results you’re looking for. And we love it when customers just go and buy our tools to try them out.
Yeah.
But we love it when they come and ask us what to do with it as well.
Yeah, we’ve gone into customers that are trying to run a multi-flute tool in a machine that’s not quite built for it. Let’s drop the flute count. Let’s reduce the radial engagement. Let’s try and shorten everything up and get everything rigid to try and eliminate the issue for us.
I think the thing that people see a lot, too, is they’ll see a gorgeous machine like this DMG Mori take a huge cut, and then they’ll go to their own machine, which may not have that spindle rigidity, they may not be running the same vises, they may not be running the same chucks, and all of a sudden they’re confused as to why it’s not working.
And then, yeah, they might blame the tool. So, I agree with you. There’s, if there’s 10 things and one of them is the tool, make sure you’re looking at the first nine at least as much as you’re looking at that tool.
Yeah. And when it comes to the programming, as well, you know, we make sure everything is as you expect, the parameters are right there, the depth of cut is what you expect it to be. If you’re expecting to take a 10% cut, and you’re actually taking a 40% cut, that’s a ton of load on that tool and on that spindle that’s going to cause chatter if it’s not what you’re expecting.
Absolutely. It’s kind of just working through it and understanding the system, you know.
And a lot of the times, when you go to a shop or when you get a new guy into your shop, you know, you need to understand that level of technical ability, you know. Are they new to it? Do they have 20 years experience? What’s their background? Because what makes sense to me and you might be absolute gibberish to somebody else. Or I could be wrong.
[laughter]
And that’s happened before.
Well, you know, you can’t win everything, right? You’ve got to try and play out the scenario, understand the application, and that’s a key part of my job is going to a customer and seeing what they’re trying to make. Hey, we want to make this. Okay, well, there’s five ways of doing that. Which one is going to work best for you?
How do you handle customer pushback when you’ll go in and say, “Hey, listen, the way you’re doing this is not wrong, but it’s not the tool’s fault that the finish is coming out there,” and they say, “Yes, it is.” How do you deal with that kind of pushback in a constructive way to get them where they need to go?
That’s people management, right? Not tool management.
One of the things we try and do is just talk to people and say, “Hey, look, have you had this issue before? Have you had it on other tools? Have you had it on other machines?” Right.
It’s very easy to point the blame at a tool, especially if it’s the first time they’ve run it, for example. So, we’ll have a look and try and say, “Okay, like you said, start top down. Okay, is your holder in good condition? Is your pull stud torque? Is the tool holder back damaged or rusted? You know, is your coolant in good condition?”
And you’ve got to kind of tread carefully because sometimes people get a little sensitive to these things, especially if it’s a smaller shop.
Yes.
But if the guys are experienced and you can have a technical conversation with them and say, “Hey, look, we understand what you’re trying to do. There’s clearly an issue. We’ve got a few things we can test.”
And as you mentioned earlier, you know, we’re not going to throw four different changes at it in one go. Let’s check the holder out first, make sure that’s good. Let’s check the work holding, make sure that’s good. Are your parameters good? Do we need to slow things down?
Because we do have a good set of parameters, you know, in our catalog we have conservative parameters that get people up and running. We also have our Apex data sheets, which are a bit more dialed in on materials-specific.
And if we can go with those parameters and say, “Hey, look, we expect this to work, but something’s causing it not to.” That’s like, we’re not just going to give you a tool and wish you good luck. We’re going to dial in and figure out what that issue is.
And people need to be approached differently, applications need to be approached differently, but if you can just say, “Hey, look, we’re here to help. You know, there’s plenty of good tools on the market. We feel we have a good tool. Let’s help you get the most out of it.”
And more often than not, people are receptive to help, you know?
Machine time is the biggest cost.
Yeah, absolutely.
And if we can get you up and running quicker with a better tool that will last longer, customers are happy.
Yeah, who’s going to be mad about that?
[laughter]
Well, that brings a good question to mind. So, we’ve run a lot of tools over the years, and when Lakewood first started, we had some older machines. We had a ’92 and a ’93 VF4 and VF3.
So, when we would get tooling in, we would typically run it much slower than the manufacturers’ recommended tool speeds. And although we’ve upgraded our equipment and got much newer stuff, I find that when we try tools for the first time, if we get an SGS tool in and they say, “Run it 10,000 RPM at 200 in/min,” we don’t trust that right off the bat, and I feel like it’s doing us a disservice.
How do we get more comfortable trusting those kind of manufacturer speeds? Sometimes you look at them and you’re like, “Yeah, this is insanity. I feed it 10 in/min when I’m drilling this hole. You’re telling me to do 130.” Right. How do you get more comfortable with that?
Yeah, you see, it can be a really tough sell because it is a completely different way of approaching the problem, you know.
You mentioned kind of that disparity in drilling feed. And it is something we come across especially in aluminum, you know.
Right.
Guys that have been machining aluminum for a long time or it’s the way we’ve always done it. It’s a bad situation for a lot of shops.
Absolutely.
Just because it’s the way you’ve always done it means you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. You’re bleeding out on that time because we’ve saved customers time and money on drilling applications where they didn’t even realize that was the bottleneck.
Right.
And to approach a customer who says, “Hey, we’re running at 10. You’re saying 130. I don’t trust that’s going to work. I can’t risk scrapping a job.”
Right.
Well, work with a customer, you know, we’ll try and build some confidence, but there’s a cut off where if you’re running a high-performance tool, you can’t run that slow.
No.
Because you’ll stop cutting, you’ll start rubbing, you’ll get material adhesion, you know, and that’s just going to kill the tool as well.
And oftentimes running too slow is worse than running too fast.
Oh, yeah. I remember the first time we ran one of the Raptor minis. We were recommended a certain depth cut, a certain speed, a certain feed. We, I think we halved everything when we were running it.
Right.
We were surprised that our tool life wasn’t as good.
Right.
The second we actually listened and we had dialed it up, we were getting better chip evacuation, the heat was leaving with the chips, so it wasn’t building up.
We actually started running it dry as was recommended because we were running with coolant and that was causing thermal shock to the inserts.
Right.
So, although on paper it was a harder cut, it was, to your mind, maybe being harder on the tool or the machine, it was actually producing better results, better tool life, and everything on top of there, even though that’s counterintuitive.
Yeah, absolutely, you know, if you baby a high-performance tool, it’s not going to give you what you need.
Right.
You need to work that geometry, you know, there’s all that special geometry in there. If you want to run really slow and careful, a high-performance tool is not for you.
No, if you’re going to peck with a carbide drill, right, a general-purpose tool is the way to go.
Right.
Want a 5X D hole punching through aluminum with just flood coolant, high-performance 3X D drill is the way to go. At 130 in a minute to start, you know.
Right.
Once we’ve got that confidence of the customer, like you said, you know, you can run at certain parameters that you think are still aggressive and then a sales guy or an apps guy comes to you and says, “No, no, no, no, you want to run three times faster than that.” That’s a big hill to get over.
Big time.
Especially if there is that concern of scrapping a job, you know.
So, if we can say, “Hey, look, let’s be iterative in this push, you know.”
We’ve gone into customers and suggested feeds and speeds to people that have absolutely blown their mind.
Mhm.
But they’ve been willing to try it and, like you said, once they’re running at their aggressive parameters, the chips form correctly, there’s no built-up edge, the tool life goes through the roof, and that machining time comes down massively.
Absolutely.
And that’s a big factor, you know.
One thing that we come across a lot is a customer will say, “I don’t need a high-performance end mill, a general-purpose carbide end mill will do me, you know. I’m not paying for that extra cost.”
Right.
And for some people that’s a big block to really gain some productivity.
Absolutely.
You know, we can go in with a general-purpose tool and get good results. We have great general-performance tools, but we have even better high-performance tools and if we can convince a customer to let us test a high-performance tool, to go from one of our Series 1 four-flute end mills to a Z-Carb AP end mill, it’s just night and day difference, you know.
We’ll double or more of the feed, we’ll increase the surface feet per minute, and we’ll get more grind and the tool life will increase, productivity increases, and that’s where the money is.
So when you’re looking at a tool that costs 30, 40% more or higher, you know, just because that tool’s that higher cost, the machine time comes down and the hourly rate of most shops is way more than a tool will ever be.
As shop owners, you know that we have limited time, we have limited resources. Lean on your applications engineers. It’s a great resource to have and I feel like it’s underutilized.
You guys are always willing to help.
Absolutely. Whether it’s by phone or by email, you know, if we need to be on site, that’s not a problem. We’re there to help you find the solution.
Ian, it’s been great to have you here on Tips and Chips.
Thank you very much for having me.
Not a problem. Thank you. We hope to see you again.
Thanks guys.
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