I sometimes get email letters from beginning CNC machinists thanking me for making the FSWizard Online Speed and Feed Calculator available for free and asking for some tips and hints.

I always answer and try to encourage people.

Looking at my own CNC career I realize that the thing that is making me successful in my eyes is my own laziness.

Because of how lazy I am I always try to make things the fastest and easiest way possible.

At my previous day job I earned several awards for improving various processes many times saving the company thousands of dollars and many man-hours as a result.

So the main advice I have for those willing to advance is "be lazy"

Always try to improve on your work and make things work faster and better, so you do not have to work hard. If you are successful, your boss will notice.

Bill Gates - the founder of Microsoft once said that he would always give the hard jobs to lazy people, because they always manage to find ways to do them easy.

One of the awards i received

Manufacturing seems to be going back to North America, but thousands of college graduates who finish various CNC -related courses have a very shallow understanding of metal-cutting processes and forces involved.

Frankly i believe Speeds and Feeds should be a separate subject all together.

To help students fill the gap, I am offering US and Canadian educational facilities help with setting up their classes with free HSMAdvisor seats.

Update: Countries of EU and England are now included into the offer!

The total maximum number of seats handed out will be limited to 200.

If you represent a college or a university and want to sign up, please send me an email with your name, position, and number of seats requested.

My email address is cnc@zero-divide.net

I will set up your license and reply with information on how to obtain the license keys.

If you know a place that could benefit from this offer, please share this message.

Eldar Gerfanov, developer of HSMAdvisor and FSWizard machinists calculators.

HSMAdvisor has got a brand new CAD/CAM integration profiles manager.

It is now possible to import/export profiles to and from HSMAdvisor.

For now i only had time to add SurfCAM 5.2 to the list. MasterCAM x2 is coming a little later.

While using Capture Wizard yields very satisfactory results in most cases, it does not take a long time to set up either.
The whole procedure of creating a brand new profile takes just about 30 minutes.

If you created your own profile for a CAM system that is not already in the lest, please send it to my e-mail address: cnc@zero-divide.net or create a thread on the support forums. There you can upload XML files directly.

I would like to add it to the next release for everyone to enjoy.

Very good things happen to those who contribute!

If you need any help figuring out CAD/CAM integration. please refer to "HSMAdvisor Tutorials" category of this site, create a thread on support forums, or send me an email!

In this tutorial we are going to explore different options and techniques when programming cutter movement.

Lets begin with a simple part shown in a drawing below.

Basically it is a rectangular piece 4.00x2.00
For the purpose of simplicity lets make the depth of our profile (z- dimention) 0.75"

We are going to use a 0.5" dia endmill, again because it is a very common size and is easy to do basic math with.

I took a liberty of puting locations for our part/toolpath, so it is easy to extract numbers from the drawing just by looking at it.

Notice the green rectangle. This rectangle represents the path that the center of the tool will have to take to produce the part with required dimentions.
The thing is: because endmills have certain diameter, the center of the tool must be always offset by its radius.

There are two ways of doing that.Read More 

Another week another update!

A few days ago a topic popped up in CNCZone's BobCad-CAM forums regarding why speeds and feeds in above mentioned BobCAM were so crazy and unworkable.

Users were complaining and raving about such a "simple" thing like a good speed/feed calculator being missing from there.

This is actually a trend in pretty much any other CAM software package.

They sell tool to create toolpaths.
Many give tools to create 2D geometry and even real solids.

But very few CAM packages offer anything that even remotely resembles working starting cutting parameters.

It does seem bizarre and strange. But every CAM program "knows" type of material being worked on. It knows type of tool, its diameter and length.
It even knows flute length, cutting depth, width, ramp angle... pretty much everything.

But given all that they are unable to combine all this data and produce Speed and Feed that would not either break the cutter or melt it into the work-piece!

Anyway. Back to the topic.

Someone on that forum thread mentioned my old FSWizard.
It sparked quite a lot of interest, and i popped in and dropped a link to the latest version of HSMAdvisor, so that they actually try and see what a good calc can do.

As a result i have received a ton of emails filled with suggestions and thank-yous.

Apparently many did not even know anything about it and were surprised how well it worked for them.
One guy who just bought a license even said that his copy already paid for itself several times over within the first couple of days of using it!

To thank for enthusiasm, i quickly implemented some of those suggestions and i am now releasing them in this version 0.710

New thing are

• Adjustable font size and style. (in Settings) Allows to adjust global application font.
• Adjustable default values for Speed&Feed Overrides, Tool Productivity, Deflection and Torque Limits. (in Settings) You can now set values to which overrides reset by default.
• New Plunge Feedrate field shows up for milling tools.
  Non-Center cutting tools like Indexed endmills etc. will have plunge feed equal Zero.

Thanks everybody for support and suggestions!

As usual you can download the latest release on the Download page.

Lately there have been a lot of really interesting HSM topics on PracticalMachinist forums.

In one of them a guy who owns his own resharpening business posted a video of his endmill milling a block of D2 hardened to over 60 RC.
The forum topic is located here First try on D2 62Rc(video)

Here is his post so you know what we are talking about:

In the ensuing discussion i posted my own take on how and why HSM works

HSM works in many ways.

1) Reduced cutting time per edge per revolution allows it to cool down more.
2) Chip thinning allows to increase chipload (advancement per tooth per revolution)
3) Increased depth of cut combined with shallow radial positively affects deflection. Tool bends less as it is more rigid towards the tool holder.
4) Higher cutting speed actually reduces cutting forces as heat generated in the cutting zone makes it easier to shear off a layer of metal. Yet because the time of contact is so small, most of the heat is carried away with the chip.
5) Higher RPM also allows to get rid of hot chips faster thus further reducing heat transferred to the tool.
6) Higher feedrate actually reduces relative cutting speed.
7) At high axial engagements more than one flute is in contact with the workpiece at different points along the axis of the tool. This too helps combat vibrations and chatter.
8) You are using more of the tool than just its tip, so technically you can do more work with one tool before it gets dull.
9) lastly it looks cool as hell and is very impressive. Whenever we know visitors or bosses are coming we try to make sure some HSM is going on even if application does not merit that
I am not sure if the air that is moved by the endmill is doing much, but i suspect he didn't mean exactly that.

This video was uploaded a couple of days ago and has sparked fierce debates on PM forums about its feasibility.

There is no official information yet, but some are already wondering how accurate and cheap it is going to be.

.....and this is why they are so heavy.

I have stumbled upon this video the other day.

It shows a very good reason to keep those doors closed at all times when runing your machine.

Hello gentleman,

This has been a great run.
Many of suggested features were implemented.
All of the reported bugs fixed and still there is so much to do left.

Out "get it for free" program however has ended.

Here is a list of people who qualified for a free license.

Users who earned at least 2 points got qualified!

Pleaase send me email at cnc@zero-divide.net with your:

Name
Last Name
email address
Computer ID key

Those are users who gave suggestions on support forums.

If you wrote me emails, please get in touch with me anyway. Most of my email contacts who was involved into beta-testing have already gotten their keys.

Qualified users who suggested by email are:

• Stan stanmc@****.net
• David C. Allen
  

If you feel left out please get in touch with me. i could have forgotten somebody.

I often read how somebody is suggesting other people to use TiAlN coated tooling for machining aluminum alloys.

I even see that coming from developers of other cnc speed and feed calculators who should know better.

Wake up people and stop misinforming your users.

TiAlN coating is NOT FOR Aluminum!

HarveyTool application chart