Nj Ring Titanium, milling Titanium ?
Q.Could you mill Titanium (Ti-15V-3Cr-3Al-3Sn) with TiN coated 4 fluted end mills? Or if not what is recommended?
A.Cut it with what? Titanium requires a very rigid machine with a ton of power. A 4fl EM will work fine, however boatloads of coolant are required no matter what kind of machine you're using. Slow speeds and heavy feeds are recommended. I have no experience with it though. .003 per tooth sounds heavy enough. MSC has tons of tooling claiming better performance on titanium. My son has done a fairly extensive amount of Titanium machining on a RF30 drill-mill and on an old 12 inch Logan. He machines it dry with carbide tools, but not in my shop because of the pyrotechnics you get from the stuff when you machine it dry. His comment was that it is easy to machine if you know what you are doing, and he has done some beautiful work with titanium. My brother milled a set of wedding rings out of titanium. He said it was interesting to hear the 5 HP motor on the mill bog down when it tried to cut the stuff. They ended up taking very small feeds, I believe. I began this thread hoping for experienced machinists to help me by recommending a cutting tool. What I found was the paradigm that is presented to many newcomers when trying something some of those experienced have not tried. I looked further on the internet, after I realized that Titanium is not really that unusual from a mechanical property standpoint. I learned from a grad thesis published on the web, and stated @ http://www.twoalloys.com : "As a family, titanium and its alloys have developed a mystique as a nightmare to machine. This is simply not the case. Experienced operators have compared its characteristics to those found in 316 stainless steel. Recommended practice includes high coolant flow(to offset the material's low thermal conductivity), slow speeds and relatively high feed rates. Tooling should be tungsten carbide designations C1-C4 or cobalt type high speed tools." I suspect the 5hp motor bogging down was probably a combination of feed and coolant inadequacies. After reading the statement comparing Ti with SS, I bought a length of 6-4 Ti, and proceded to try out my little Atlas mini-mill, I cut a keyway slot 6in long by .125 x.125 without any trouble. Although I have found TiN mills gall, but HSS works O.K. (not great) and flood coolant is a must. If my crappy little machine with 1/2 HP will do the job, I am sure a Bridgeport would cut like butter.
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