I have gained a great deal from the “ZONE” over the past 1½ yrs and would like give back a little to the members. I’m currently writing a small program that calculates various values that seem to be used while machining. Not knowing actually any of the formulas I began searching, and it appears that speed and feed are the most requested. Below is a list of what it can do so far along with the formulas that I used. If any of the formulas are incorrect please let me know so they can be corrected and any other function (along with formulas) that would be useful in the “hobby shop”. Keep in mind that I am self taught in VB and that my skills are limited.

Current Functions:

*Spindle Speed: speed = (cs)*3.82 / d
CS = the sfpm of the material
D = diameter of the cutting tool
There is also a chart that can be edited for the different material CS values.


*Feed Rate: feed = (chip load) * (# of flutes) * (spindle RPM)

*Fractional to Decimal converter: (for those of us that need it)

There is a database associated with the program so adding things as far as like drill sizes,Tap drills etc wouldn’t be hard to incorporate into the program. As I stated, I’m open to suggestions as far as what else would be nice to have, but I might not be able to accomplish all that is requested.