[pearldiver]

There are so many types of face mill in the market and I'm quite confused on what facemill best suite my needs.
I used to manually mill some of my blades with a 3/4 inch endmill ,..... but it takes so long to finish one. I'm planning to
get a 3 inch facemill to make the processes faster. What do you suppose guys would be best for my application?
Very often I'll be using it to face mill a 3/16 to 1/4 thick stainless steel plate.

Also, if possible I need a facemill that would produce a nice smooth finish :-)

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

A lot depends on what material you're milling, the rigidity of the milling machine and set-up, how much speed and power are avalable.

Sandvik and others can recommend inserts, speeds, feeds, chipload etc. in the tech sections of their catalogs. These are normally on line thru the miracle of "google".

As far as "a nice smooth finish" you might look into face mills with wiper inserts.

Dick Z

[a1diesinker]

what type of mill are you using small machines don't like big face mills
And stainless is not easy to cut.If you want a square shoulder cut I would use Iscar
ADKT for a cat 40 or bigger APKT for small machines APKT I think only goes up to 1 1/2
Works great on Bridgeports

[pearldiver]

what type of mill are you using small machines don't like big face mills
And stainless is not easy to cut.

This is the machine that I have in my shop M603D | BM-30A Turret Milling Machine | machineryhouse.com.au
I have tried a 65mm 45degree seco facemill and it cut the material without any problem.

[wizard]

This is the machine that I have in my shop M603D | BM-30A Turret Milling Machine | machineryhouse.com.au
I have tried a 65mm 45degree seco facemill and it cut the material without any problem.

At work we use an "Octomill" with an integrated R8 shank in a Bridgeport. At least I think it was a Seco Octomill as I'm not at work at the moment, but it uses the eight sides inserts. I can't find it listed in Secos catalog so maybe I'm having a señor moment. Almost everybody in the tooling industry though makes face mills taking these inserts. In a nut shell I've been please with the mill as you get close and sometimes better than fly cut results. This would be useless though if you intend to profile the blade.

Honestly though how big are these blades that it takes to long to machine the current way you go about it? The other thing I would wonder about is how well would a face mill work on thin stock like you are suggesting.

An interesting compromise here might be a fly cutter that takes a single insert, Tormach makes something along this line. Fly cutters can deliver really nice surfaces finishes and carbide might hold up better in the materials you are working with.