[Bryan Turner]

Hello,

After years of using calculators with odd restrictions and sometimes confusing behavior, I decided to just write my own. It ain't pretty, but I've been using it for the last 6 months with no major issues. I'm sure a wider audience will quickly find some issues that need fixing (tested on WebKit, Safari, and Firefox).

Optimizing Feeds and Speeds Calculator for Milling

It's free, open-source, and you can download it to use offline -- I wrote it as all one page so it will work without an internet connection. I use the "offline reader" feature of my iPhone to keep a copy at-the-ready no matter where I am.

You can save cut parameters by simply bookmarking the generated link (next to the calculate button). This allows you to quickly build up your cut database, and by exporting the URLs to text you can exchange links with others, and use offline editors to modify or batch-update a set of cuts.

It has the usual features including chip thinning for radial and axial depths (for optimizing ballnose cutters). The materials list is quite thin, I have a much more complete table in my version but it is basically lifted straight from Machinery's Handbook and I don't have the rights to redistribute it. I'm happy to add additional entries if the sources provided are public. I have only used the Aluminum settings! The values for other materials were taken from published literature buy YMMV.

The main reason I wrote this calculator is for the graphs at the bottom; they display a variety of cut parameters and give you a sense of what kinds of cuts are available and their tradeoffs. No one cut is the 'right' one, and fighting with existing calculators to give me these options has been aggravating.

Currently it only uses imperial units, apologies to the other 99.999% of the world!

I'm hosting it on GitHub, released under GPLv3. Pull requests welcome!
--Bryan

[brianbonedoc]

Awesome. Can't wait to try it!

[Mechanized]

Very cool, nice work!:cheers:

[Hirudin]

Thanks for making this available, it looks really cool! I'm going to send you some bucks...

If you do decide to incorporate metric units into the calculator, would you consider making each input/output field selectable between metric and imperial? The reason I would like this is because, since I live in the US, the vast majority of my tools are measured in imperial units. Also, the vast majority of the manufacturer data are imperial. But I like to run my machine in metric. This means I usually have to convert units between the two systems manually, which, of course, opens the door to calculation and transcription errors.


A "reset" button would be nice.

Oh, it might be beneficial to have some form of the "what do the colors mean" info on the main page as well. Like a filled in blue box that says "Variety-Limiting Input" and an orange box that says "Parameter Near Maximum Allowed".

[wtopace]

Very nicely done! Clever using Javascript for all of the calculations to keep it all client-side. You might consider swapping over to bootstrap for the UI, just to make the CSS and HTML a little simpler and to correct some of the positioning issues. I really like the heat map ideas at the bottom, you might consider taking a look at Plotly for graphs if you decide to refactor some of that code.

I'm actually just starting on an open source tool myself as well, I might be interested in pulling some of your work in as a Django microservice if you don't mind - would be happy to provide a pull request if you're interested in having both front-end and back-end processing capabilities..

Keep up the great work and thanks for your contributions!!

[brianbonedoc]

just played with the tool - it's very nice! Thanks for all the hard work you put into it!

[Bryan Turner]

Thanks for the replies, glad you've found it useful!

I was asked to post instructions on HOW to download it for offline use, which I should have included in the original post..

Method 1:
On most browsers, you can "right click" on the link in the first post to get a context menu. On Safari, that menu includes "Download Linked File". On Firefox and Chrome, its called "Save Link As..."

Chrome right-click:
Attachment 310046

Firefox right-click:
Attachment 310048

Safari right-click:
Attachment 310050


Method 2:
If right-clicking does not work, then just open the calculator in your browser and look under the "File" menu on your browser. There is an item that says "Save Page As..." or "Save As..". This will open a window asking where you want to save the page, and what to call it. I use the name "feeds-and-speeds.html", but you could pick anything -- just make sure it has ".html" on the end of the file name! Finally, you need to find the option to "save as source" or "save as HTML".

Chrome File->Save As..
Attachment 310052
Attachment 310054

Firefox File->Save As..
Attachment 310056
Attachment 310058

Safari File->Save As..
Attachment 310060
Attachment 310062

Once you have the file on your computer, put it somewhere convenient like the desktop. To open the calculator, just double-click and your default browser will pop open a new window with the calculator.

NOTE: The Google graphs do not work in offline mode. :-( I may look for a client-side graph library, but I want to keep the basic calculator on one page, all-inclusive.

[MFchief]

Looks good to me, I want to try it out, but I think you meant "right click" instead of "left click", at least for Chrome. LoL

Terry

[Bryan Turner]

I'm going to send you some bucks...

Thanks! I'm hoping it will drive some innovation in this space, and some collaboration among the community.

If you do decide to incorporate metric units into the calculator, would you consider making each input/output field selectable between metric and imperial? [ ... ] But I like to run my machine in metric. This means I usually have to convert units between the two systems manually, which, of course, opens the door to calculation and transcription errors.

Interesting idea! I'm most of the way through adding metric to the computation engine, but I had not considered transcribing between the two. I can probably add a "convert" function which would convert the inputs (and thus outputs) to Metric, but if you go back & forth a few times it would slowly accumulate conversion errors. Might be "good enough" for the short term, as it would not be hard to add.

A "reset" button would be nice.

Do you mean "clear all inputs", or "clear the currently collected results"? It already clears the results each time you change the data. Clearing inputs implies the rather tedious chore of re-entering all the data. I imagine the typical use case is to load the calculator, enter all the values (once!), then bookmark the result. Next time you use the calculator, just pull that bookmark as the starting point.

Let me know if you see a different use case.

I also looked at browser-side storage to retain the inputs and act as a cut-database. Not difficult, but it's bulky and would have taken longer than I had motivation for when I wrote the calculator.

Oh, it might be beneficial to have some form of the "what do the colors mean" info on the main page as well. Like a filled in blue box that says "Variety-Limiting Input" and an orange box that says "Parameter Near Maximum Allowed".

Agreed. Just didn't get around to it.

--Bryan

[Hirudin]

...
Do you mean "clear all inputs", or "clear the currently collected results"? It already clears the results each time you change the data. Clearing inputs implies the rather tedious chore of re-entering all the data. I imagine the typical use case is to load the calculator, enter all the values (once!), then bookmark the result. Next time you use the calculator, just pull that bookmark as the starting point.
...

I did mean "clear all inputs", but you're right, the user creating a bookmark after entering all the "defaults" they want is more practical. Then they can just reload their bookmark when/if they want to start over.

[Bryan Turner]

Hirudin,

I added Metric conversion to the calculator. Have not tested it much, but the numbers "look right". Let me know if you run into any problems.

Specifically, it will convert the number in-place, so you can switch back and forth. I think it will support your use case nicely.

I also removed the numeric input restriction in favor of evaluated inputs. So you can now enter diameter as "3/8" instead of "0.375", etc.
--Bryan

[RTP_Burnsville]

Thanks.... nice job

[Bryan Turner]

Thanks for all the great feedback and PMs! I got some time to fix the big bugs on the punch list and just uploaded a new version.

Optimizing Feeds and Speeds Calculator for Milling

Changes:
- Did a major rewrite on the basic optimization technique, it will now find 'true' optimal points. This means you usually don't need to press the calculate button at all, unless your parameters are set really wide (or too tight).
- Stable search results -- Bookmarking a link should now return you the same results each time (contact me if this is not the case!)
- Fully integrated metric/imperial selection & unit display
- Online/offline fixes so it doesn't hang waiting for a connection when offline.

I think the calculator has become quite friendly!

Let me know if you have some other ideas or run into more bugs,
--Bryan

[shujaa]

Hi turner,

i downloaded your above Feed and Speed calculator.I cannot understand a few things . Can you please guide me.

1. Although i selected metric the bottom graph scale is titled inch/minute


Best regards for such a nice calculator.

[shujaa]

Dear Bryan,

Why do some people insist on cutting wood at 4000 or more mm/min ??