PSA: I ran 3/4 tool steel with the wrong feeds for 2 years

Last week I was cutting a batch of T15 at a shop in Toledo and the insert just shattered... I asked this old timer what I was doing wrong and he showed me that I had been running my feed rate about 40% too slow the whole time. Turns out I had the numbers backwards from an old Haas manual I memorized. Has anyone else found out way later that they were using the wrong speeds or feeds on a common material?

3 comments

3 Comments

murray.jana26d ago

Honestly, how did you not catch that earlier? It's wild how we lock onto something we learned once and just run with it for years. I had a similar moment with aluminum feeds once, where I was pushing way too slow because some old timer told me "you can't rush soft materials" back in the day. Turns out I was basically grinding my inserts down for nothing, wasting money and time. Now I always double check the manual for any new material, even if I think I know it.

diana51226d ago

Idk, I kinda see it the other way. @finley_gonzalez49 has a point about trusting the old timer, but at the same time manuals aren't just paper weights. I mean, you can learn from both without burning through your tooling.

finley_gonzalez4926d ago

Hold on, let's not act like this is some huge life crisis. You figured out you were running soft metals too slow, big deal. It's not like you were welding with your eyes closed or something. Half the time you hand me a manual and I'm still gonna trust the guy who's been doing it for 30 years, at least to start. Sure, you wasted a few inserts, but that's just the cost of learning on the job. I bet you learned more from that old timer than you would from reading a spec sheet anyway.