What is a milling cutter?
A milling cutter is a kind of cutting tool commonly used in milling machines. It is a rotating tool with multiple teeth that mills at a stable feed rate to remove material. It is mainly used for machining planes, steps, grooves, drilling holes, and various forming surfaces (such as splines, gears and threads) on milling machines.
There are many types of milling cutters with different structures. The shape of the cutter head, the helix angle of the blade, the number of blades and the size of the chip groove, the material of the cutter body, and the coating will affect the cutting accuracy and efficiency.
We roughly divide milling cutters into three kinds according to their uses, which are for machining flat surfaces, for machining grooves, and for machining special forming surfaces.
1. For machining flat surfaces
End mill
End mills are the most basic cutting tools, usually made of high-speed steel (HSS) or cemented carbide. High-speed steel is the most widely used tool material, with good edge strength and toughness, strong vibration resistance. It can be used to manufacture tools with average cutting speed. For the tool machine with poor rigidity, the high-speed steel milling cutter can still be cut smoothly.
According to end shape, end mills can be further subdivided into 3 types:
Square
Corner Radius
Ball Nose
2. For machining grooves
T‑slot cutter
It can be used to machine inverted T-groove, outer grooves, in-hole grooves, and even mill threads
Chamfer cutter
In addition to processing corner chamfering, it can also process V-shaped grooves and lettering
Dovetail Cutter
The dovetail groove is similar to an inverted trapezoidal keyway, suitable for holding an O-ring in place on a seal face or use as a finely adjustable slide guide.
3. For machining special forming surfaces
Form milling cutter
The Form milling cutter is a special milling cutter used to process the forming surface. The profile of its blade needs to be designed and calculated based on the profile of the workpiece to be processed. It can process the surface with complex shapes with high efficiency and can ensure the shape is basically the same. It is widely used in batch production and mass production.
There are many kinds of milling cutters and they also can be customized. Selecting a suitable milling cutter during processing can greatly improve processing efficiency and precision while controlling costs. Therefore, it is necessary to know more about the characteristics of milling cutters and their processing methods.
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