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

The best online cnc speed and feed calculator FSWizard is now available as an app for iPhone and Android.

CNC Milling and Turning Speed and Feed Calculator For Machinists on the palm of your hand!

Go To FSWizard Online Calculator

Note: Certain HSMAdvisor Licenses Include FSWizard PRO For Android for Free!!
Check out our HSMAdvisor Web Store for Details

Absolutely the best handheld CNC machinist's speed and feed calculator around.
Calculate cutting conditions simply by choosing your work and tool material.
No need to know any numbers. 
FSWizard will automatically use recommended cutting speed and chipload.

* Made by a machinist for machinists * 

Improve productivity and optimize cutter life.

* Milling, Drilling, Tapping and Turning
* Suggests optimum cutting depth and balances cutting parameters.
* Supports Chip thinning and HSM machining.
* Required Power estimation, Recommended Depth/Width of Cut for extra-long cutters.
* Built in tap drill calculator to calculate not only cutting speed and feed , but also drill dia in accordance with desired thread engagement.
* Drill and Tap charts for both imperial and metric systems.
* Oblique Triangle Calculator
* Fillet Calculator will find tangent points to a circle and two lines
* Machinists Bolt Hole Circle and Line Calculators

It just does it all.

*Milling Tools: Solid EndMill, Indexed End Mill and FaceMill, Solid and Indexable drills
*Drilling Tools: Jobber Drill, Hi-Performance Parabolic Drill, Spade Drill, Reamer
*Turning Tools: Profiling and Grooving

Please try the Free FSWizard Lite first to confirm your device capability.
Also huge thanks to those who go through the trouble and leave a review.
Good reviews mean more sales and more incentive for me to further improve on this app.

FSWizard Lite and FSWizard PRO are iPhone/Android machinist calculators that do not require internet connection.
PRO version has all the latest material lists and speed and feed technology.

Lite version has all the same features, but it only has tool steel, mild steel and aluminum in its material list. It still has all the tool types and tool materials found in online and standalone versions
Both Lite and Pro  versions have unlocked tapping data.

Lite versions have limited geometry calculators.

This app is intended not to replace but to complement my much more powerful standalone Windows application called HSMAdvisor.

FSWizard LITE Free
FSWizard PRO $49.99
FSWizard PRO $39.99 Multiplatform License for iOS and Android Purchase through PayPal

2013-07-06_15-51-40.png 2013-07-06_15-51-50.png 2013-07-06_15-52-04.png 2013-07-06_16-03-27.png 2013-07-06_15-52-51.png 2013-07-06_15-52-27.png Fillet Calculator Oblique Triangle Calculator Pipe Taps New Layout Bolt Hole calc Bolt Hole Line Calculator Bolt Hole Particial Calculator SHCS Reference 82Deg FHS Reference

This release features some pretty major updates and features.

First of all, Tool deflection model has been radically improved over previous versions.
Now model fully considers not only the flute length, but also depth of cut and how it affects deflection!

No other speed and feed calculator alows you to do that.

Calculator now helps getting full advantage of those Hight Axial engagement toolpaths.

New things

• HSMAdvisor can now print!
  For now you can print a screenshot of application window. Make sure to select "Album" layout in your printer settings, otherwise portion of the window may get cut off.
  Tool library printing is next in line to be done.
• User Library Export and Import in XML format is now available.
  You can use it to back up your tool library and share library files with others.
• Library Tabs are now right-clickable by mouse- this allows to right click on the library tab and select desired action like "Delete" "Merge" and "Rename".
• Speeds for some tool and stainless steels have been revised.
  Couple of materials were added.

Things updated and improved

• Improved tool deflection model.
• Improved and fixed machine and tool limits trigering.
• Creation of new Tool or Cut now forces newly-created tool/cut to get loaded, so you dont have to search it from the drop-down list- it becomes active right away.
• Viewing and editing of tool/cut info in myCutDB page now does not close opened tool tree.
• Tool material and Work Material are now a single column. Its called Tool&Work Material and it shows tool material for Tool rows and work material for Cut rows

HSM or High Speed Machining is becoming more and more popular each day.
Many of us have seen those youtube videos where endmlls remove large amounts of material at high speeds/feeds.

While definitions of HSM may vary between tool manufacturers and even individual shops, the physics behind it remain the same.

In this article i would like to explore flat endmills.

HSM is not about ramping up your speed/feed overrides to 200% and puling out your smartphone to record another youtube-worth video.

What is HSM?

HSM is a complex of programming, machining and tooling techniques aimed at radical increase of productivity.

Programming

The cornerstone of HSM is low radial and high axial engagement of an endmill with the workpiece.

There are many CAD/CAM systems that allow you to create HSM tool-paths. Mastercam's Dynamic milling and SurfCAM's Truemill are some of them.

When radial cutter engagement with the material is smaller than the radius of the tool an interesting thing happens.
Chip load- the distance the tool advances per cutter revolution per tooth- does not equal the actual chip thickness anymore.
Chip thinning mainly happens at radial engagements below 30% of the diameter.

In order to get compensated chipload you need to multiply recommended by manufacturer chipload by the chip thinning factor.

Usual Radial Engagement for HSM toolpaths however is between 5 and 15%.

Axial depth of cut varies depending on geometry, but Read More 

Radial Chip Thinning HSMAdvisor Screenshot

Sevaral weeks ago i saw a post on CNCZone.

A HSMadvisor user Peter Neil used it to calculate cutting conditions for cutting a block of pre-hardened stainless steel.
His machine was Tormach.

Here is an exact copy-paste from that forum post:
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Did a test cut on the Tormach today using feeds & speeds from the latest version of the excellent HSM advisor.
To make it interesting, I did the cut using some 1.2085 pre-hard Stainless Steel as I have plenty of stock of it and have a job in mind for this, and wanted to see how it cut on the Tormach.
The material is like a stainless P20, at 16% Chrome/1% Nickel & 0.5% Sulphur (which makes it slightly free-er machining) and is hardened to around 33-35 Rockwell C, so I used the HSM advisor guidelines for machining P20 rather than Stainless. Cutter was a 10mm 4-flute Carbide TiAlN coated EM.

So...... ticking the HSM/Chip thinning option I got a speed of 5120 and feed of 2214mm/minute( 87 IPM). I used a DOC of 10mm and WOC of 0.5mm/0.020" - and turned off the flood cooling to machine it completely dry. The finish pass on the 1st level was 15mm DOC and 0.5mm WOC and slightly lower speeds/feeds.

Loaded up a 40mm x 63mm block , pressed the start button, and it went from this....





...to this!

Read More 

This release is a major step forward.
We are starting to wander away from just Speeds and Feeds calculator part of the project.

Version 0.022 was a little buggy.

All reported and known bugs have been fixed.

New update version is 0.023

New features:

• Threads page: You can now get thread cutting and tapping data for most popular threads in north America (UNC/UNF/ISO).
  The list of supported threads and features will grow according to necessity and user feedback.
• Machine Profiles now have 2 new buttons: Clone and Import.
  Clone button simply copies selected machine definition with a different name.
  Import button is needed to be able to update/add machine definitions from default machine list. As users modify and customize their Machine List, thay are now able to add machine definitions hassle-free from default_machines.xml file that is supplied with every update.

Bugs Fixed:

• Sticky Ball nose check box

• Max HP improperly rounded

Additions:

• Thanks to Greg Jackson and Matt Doeppers from Tormach i was able to create Horse Power/RPM curves for Tormach PCNC770 and PCNC1100 models (if you install over previous version, you can use import function to add those machines to the list)

Threading Machine Definition Import

Sometimes people ask me: "I tried your calculator, and i liked it, but it seems to me a little too aggressive...do you actually do any testing?"

Well, to those I say that not only i do testing, but i run production jobs 100% calculated with my own HSMAdvisor.

Many machinists say that nothing beats an experienced operator holding his hand on feed hold button and playing with speed and feed override trying to find the "sweet spot" where cutting speed and feed rate are maximized and chatter is eliminated or reduced.

And it is correct, but not any machinist is experienced or actually knows what he is doing.
Many machinists also finish their apprenticeship program and never learn a single thing about new tooling types and materials since. They bag years of experience, but their knowledge is stuck on a level it was when they first got their license.

Also not a single person can possibly know cutting conditions for hundreds of materials and remember all of the jobs he had ever ran.

This is where tool database comes in.

Not only can you save tools to cut down and in many cases eliminate entering parameters for every calculation.
But you can (and should) save cutting data for each particular case.

A single tool entry can contain an unlimited number of cuts attached to it, so machinist never has to remember everything.

Here is a i made video of slotting D2 with variable helix hi-performace endmill.

Material: D-2 Tool Steel 200-250 HB
Tool: 0.500in 4FL Carbide TiAlN coated Solid HP End Mill
Speed: 360.0 SFM/ 2751.6 RPM
Feed: 0.0023 ipt/ 0.0094 ipr/ 25.76 ipm

Engagement:  DOC=0.330 in   WOC=0.500 in

I have just released HSMAdvisor build 0.017!

First you should uninstall the previous version.
As some of the data files are not compatible with the version 0.017

After downloading and installing it you will receive another 30 days to play with my software.

New things:

• A bunch of new materials
  Structural steels added 1035, 1045 and some other
• Grooving turning tool added to the tool list
• Several Tools and Cuts can now be selected at the same time and deleted or moved to a different Library
• Double click on myCut ToolLibrary now causes the Tool/Cut to load
• HSM Cutting speed compensation now only turns on when HSM/Chip Thinning is checked.
• Huge number of bugs fixed.

Get it HERE ->http://hsmadvisor.com/

Enjoy and don't forget to leave your feedback.
You can do so support forums.

Unfortunately because of high number of spam messages You will have to register first (unless you already did)

Forums are located at http://zero-divide.net/index.php?page=forums&shell_id=170&category_id=1123, a simple registration on my web site (zero-divide.net, register) allows you to post your questions/feature requests/suggestions.

Need i remind you that registered users who actively participate get full version for FREE?

Speeds and Feeds by HSMAdvisor (FSWizard)
Material: A-36 Hot Roll Steel 160-220 HB
Tool: 0.500in 4FL Carbide TiAlN coated Solid HP End Mill (WIDIA Metal Removal Maestro)
1" Stickout, 0.625 Flute Length
Speed: 528.0 SFM/ 4035.7 RPM
Feed: 0.0028 ipt/ 0.0114 ipr/ 46.00 ipm
Chip Thickness: 0.0028 in
Engagement:  DOC=0.250 in   WOC=0.500 in

Where do we stand and how did we get here.

When i first started FSWizard project one year ago in December 2011. I felt the need to upgrade my knowledge and skill-set regarding speeds, feeds and best cutting conditions.

Other calculators available at that time simply did not cut it for me.

One of them did not account for such important parameters as tool length.

The other did not care about such crucial tool geometry features like helix angle, shank diameter, lead angle and so on.

As a result i have endeavoured on a mission to build the best calculator that would accurately predict cutting forces, cutter deflection and suggest best cutting modes using all available tool data for multitude of combinations of work-piece/tool materials, coatings and tool types.

It has been a year of research, building cutter and material models, applying REAL MACHINING experience.

All results were tested in REAL PRODUCTION environment.

Today thanks to FSWizard, machines i work on produce 200%-300% more parts per day than 1 year ago.

It has been one year since i have started.
And i believe i have achieved my original goal.

Today The FREE FSWizard gives far better results than many expensive solutions available on the market.

FSWizard:Standalone is the only available program that will warn you if cutter will be reaching its breaking point.

In fact we see paying users of other programs asking their developers for features that have been long implemented in FSWizard.
And we see those developers finally moving out of their comfort zone and trying to improve their program's functionality.

Where do we go from here?

What does the future hold for this project?

No one really knows.
Unlike others who can talk the speed/feed game, I am not into marketing.
I don't do a particularly good job of persuading people that my product is the best thing that happened to the CNC world.

All i have is 2 hours of free time on my hands after work and a ton or real-world machining experience not many in the software business can brag about.

All that remains to say here is

I am not using words "product" ,"consumers" and "business" just by accident.

Next release version of FSWizard:Standalone 0.015 PRO will be a commercial product.

It will be sold as a 1 year subscription.

I am not yet sure about the pricing.
But i know that i will make it subscription-based and the price will be very affordable.

This is the only way to move forward on this.

If you have any comments or thoughts, i would love to hear them out.