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Looked at my end mill scrap bin and did the math on tooling cost per part
I was cleaning up my station yesterday and counted 47 dull carbide end mills in the scrap bin from just the last 3 months. Thats roughly $1,200 in tooling that walked out the door. Most of these were from pushing feeds way too aggressive to hit cycle time targets. I tracked it back and I am losing about $4 per part on tooling cost alone when I run at max speed. Dialing back 15% on the feed rate nearly doubles tool life and only adds like 30 seconds to the cycle. Found this number crunching in the Sandvik Coromant tooling guide last week and it surprised me how much money I was just throwing away. Has anyone else run the numbers on their actual tooling cost per part?
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skyler_jackson271mo ago
Man, that $1,200 number really hit me. I had a similar wake up call last year when I added up what I was spending on end mills and realized I could have bought a used car with that cash. It's crazy how fast those costs add up when you're just grabbing a fresh tool without thinking about it. I spent a whole afternoon reading through a Sandvik application guide and found the exact same thing you did, backing off the feed just a little saved me a ton of money and headache from crashed parts. It feels good to know someone else is out there actually running the numbers too, most guys just keep feeding it to the max and wonder why they're broke at the end of the month.
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