Case Study 1 - Aluminum Head Milling

• Application: PCD milling of aluminum cylinder head
• Current Tool: Up-sharp PCD cartridge
• Production Concerns: Surface finish, flatness/waviness and burr generation
• Goals: Reduce burr formation, improve finish, reduce waviness, increase tool life
• Current Tool Life: 60,000 to 80,000 heads
• Tool Life with EMG: 275,000 heads

Current Quality After 65,000 hits (6wks), surface finish beginning to change due to tool wear. Tools were changed at 80,000 hits due to burr generation.

Conicity Results After 500 hits, surface finish is extremely smooth.

Conicity Results After 65,000 hits, (6 weeks) no change in surface finish or flatness.

Summary
• The Conicity tools produced over 275,000 heads
• Normal tools are changed at 60,000 to 80,000 heads

NOTE: After 115,00 hits in production:
The Tooling Engineer said, “After 116K hits, surface quality trace today remains as it did at 65,000 hits. Burr formation remains at the same level as it was at 65,000 hits. If I did not know both sets of tools came from the same batch, difference being only the edge prep, no one would convince me they were the same tool.”