Posted: 3/5/2017 4:40:37 PM EDT
| I'm in my Junior year of a manufacturing degree. We have a project in our CNC course that is open ended. I wanted to make a titanium comp similar to the VG6 Gamma. I've done a little reading on titanium but would like some 1st hand experience. It sounds like a lot of the issues center around tool wear and larger production runs. I would like to make three so hopefully that won't be an issue. We use Haas TM1p w/4th axis and a TL1. For CAD/CAM we use Solidworks and HSMworks with G wizard for feeds and speeds. I know not to be shy with the feed and lots of coolant but what are your experiences with titanium? |
| Did you do any thread milling on the caps? Any issues with it work hardening? Our professor is relatively new to teaching and was never a machinist so this is new territory to him too. I'm always throwing new things at him and he usually approves it but there has been a learning curve to some of it. We just finished a Texas Star in AR500 on the water jet the other day and it came out nice but took a lot longer to do than we expected. |
|
Unless you are going to be shooting full auto, or bump fire, grade 2 will last you long enough.
Check with folks at TIMET and see if they could give (more likely sell) you a piece of XT. Same grade used for high end automotive and motorcycle exhaust (like akropovic stuff, porsche). It is designed to and does have a better high temp oxidation resistance, i don't recall if XT was something they ever had forged into bar, but a section cut from a rolled slab crop end ought to yield something useful for you. Your best bet for that might be talking to someone at the Morgantown Pa office. They would have lots of crops ends there to recycle. Maybe they could cut a small section out for you. You may need to do an anneal of the part 1450F for a couple hours). You can buy CP2 or grade 5 bar lots of places. Also CP2 or XT will machine a lot better for you than grade 5 (6-4) or the beta alloys. 21S would make an excellent brake, but is a difficult to machine alloy. After you are done machining it, you might want to dip it in a diluted nitric solution (5%) and the warm water rinse and blow dry (to avoid staining). The nitric will help rebuild the passivation layer. Or send it to get the black ion bond. |
I have work hardened TI before, it sucked. (manual lathe before tapping by hand  )
Just make sure you use coolant and the correct speeds and feeds and you will be fine. machine everything you can from one end, then if you have to, flip it and indicate the part in before you start cutting again. |
|
I machine titanium all the time Kobalt drills work.
We use CID performance end mills bus standard carbide for fluters will work Thread Milling makes it easier but the OSG vc10 with the 08 coating work great for tapping titanium Hundred and fifty surface feet for mailing but sometimes will go to 300 depending on the tool |