{"id":2101,"date":"2019-07-08T18:29:30","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T18:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kellertechnology.com\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2022-06-27T13:14:04","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T13:14:04","slug":"high-speed-machining-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kellertechnology.com\/blog\/high-speed-machining-101\/","title":{"rendered":"High Speed Machining 101"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

High speed machining (HSM) has come a very long way since its conception in the early 20th century.  Early adoption of the concept was slow, but in the early 1980s, the HSM process got a jump start as aerospace companies started making investments in research and development to further advance the technology.  In the last 20 years, huge strides have been made in a relatively short period of time and HSM has now achieved widespread acceptance by today\u2019s manufacturers. The future of high speed machining was envisioned by the process inventors when they discovered that after a certain point, increasing the cutting speed actually reduced the heat in the cut.  The graph below (Fig. 1) from Dr. Herbert Schulz\u2019s \u201cHistory of High Speed Machining\u201d illustrates this phenomenon perfectly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dr. <\/picture><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The dotted lines represent temperatures of various metals at\ndifferent surface speeds.  Temperatures\nrise steadily with increasing speed until they peak and start going down with\nhigher rates.  One of the big advantages\nof high speed machining is that at elevated rates of speed and feed, the chip\nis cut and evacuated so fast that it transfers little or no heat to the green\nworkpiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best way to describe modern high speed machining is the\ndefinition coined by Modern Machine Shop Magazine.  They stated that HSM \u201crefers to making light\nmilling passes at high spindle speed and feed rates to achieve a high metal\nremoval rate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, high speed machining is a collaboration of equipment, tooling, software, and techniques that machinists and CNC programmers use to continually improve machining efficiency in today\u2019s modern machine shops.  Advanced computer programs running on relatively inexpensive and powerful computers have made many of these rapid advancements in efficiency possible.  What may have been considered HSM only a few years ago, could now be considered standard speed machining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the more common HSM practices, techniques, and tooling found in use today are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n