To provide manufacturers with versatility and high value, Seco has launched its X-Head quick-change replaceable milling head system. With the new solution, users can quickly and easily change between various solid-carbide milling geometries and types to optimise milling operations while reducing manufacturing costs and tooling inventories.

The milling heads mount to a variety of available shank lengths for even greater versatility, with short and long-reach capability for a variety of overhang lengths. Head changes only require a simple turn of a wrench, eliminating the need to remove the holder from the machine to change the cutter. Users also eliminate the need to reset tool lengths thanks to a secure and reliable connection that provides exchange accuracies within 50 µm.

According to Gary Meyers, Seco’s product manager for solid milling, shops must often purchase many different end mills and holders to machine different features on a workpiece, adding higher project costs.

“The Seco X-Head quick-change replaceable milling head system adapts to various machining needs with a range of geometries and types but without additional holders,” he says.

With 194 types of available cutting heads, users can choose between different cutters for multiple operations, as well as between specific high-performance, versatile high-performance and universal-type geometries. Seco also offers metric and inch products for heads and shanks.
For further information www.secotools.com

To highlight the numerous solutions it offers for milling freeform surfaces, German tooling manufacturer Horn points to a recent application involving the machining of a plastic injection mould for mass producing the lens for a headlamp. The large number of surfaces, shoulders and radii required the use of many different tools.

The customer used high-feed milling cutters with indexable inserts from Horn’s DAH 8 system to rough the mould, subsequently employing different variants of solid-carbide end mills from the Horn DS tool system for finishing. In addition to various diameters of ball-nose end mills, the customer also used circle segment end mills. The advantage of the latter, in contrast to ball or torus milling cutters, is that fewer passes were required to achieve a given freeform surface quality, reducing cycle time.

In the medical sector, a customer produced a complex titanium implant using a five-axis machining centre with Horn DS titanium milling cutters. The shape of the implant comprised numerous freeform surfaces, had about 20 different radii and contained many fillets arranged at different angles. A milling cutter of 10 mm diameter and with a corner radius of 0.2 mm and another of 6 mm diameter with a 0.5 mm corner radius completed the roughing. For finishing, the customer used a 1 mm diameter end mill.

DS cutters of 10, 6, 4, 2 and 0.6 mm diameter performed other operations on the implant, along with a 2 mm diameter ball-nose end mill and a DCG solid-carbide, coated thread mill with three cutting edges. In a single pass, the tool mills an M3.5 x 0.5 through-hole thread, which is 8 mm deep and inclined at 35°. Milling two tapered recesses proved to be highly challenging. The 43° taper is about 2 mm and must end in a geometrically perfect apex, but the customer met these requirements using a Horn micro-milling cutter for both roughing and finishing passes.
For further information www.phorn.co.uk