Finally caved and tried climb milling on the old Haas last week

I've been doing conventional milling for like 5 years on this machine because that's how my old boss taught me. He swore climb milling would wreck the inserts and cause chatter on our older VF-2. Then last Tuesday I had a job with some 304 stainless and the finish looked terrible, so I flipped the direction out of frustration. Man the surface finish was night and day better, and I didn't break a single insert on that whole run of 50 parts. Now I'm wondering how much time I wasted over the years running the wrong way. Any of you guys stick with one direction out of habit?

3 comments

3 Comments

betty_wells15d ago

Right there with you... stuck with conventional for years because of some old timer advice. Switched to climb on a tough 17-4 job and felt like an idiot for not trying it sooner. Tool life went way up, not down.

michaeld4815d ago

Wait, you actually got BETTER tool life with climb?

piper77915d ago

...and I about fell off my chair when it happened. I was running a job in 4140 with a 3/4 inch end mill, conventional like I always did, burning through inserts every few parts. Out of desperation one Friday afternoon I flipped it to climb. Not only did the finish clean up, that same tool lasted twice as long. I figured I had to be doing something wrong, checked my speeds three times, but nope. It just worked better.