Climb milling - right way to go?

[Seadog]

Conventional milling is also known as upcut milling

It used to be known as 'back milling.' I am the only person in the world still using this term?

 

[Kram]

Some situations it works better. Fly cutting might be I cant remember. Big endmills can take a lot more abuse, so plastic and alu with an 18mm endmill I will climb.
The lathe is quite good except a lot of slop on the vertical screw so only on cross axis until I sort a new thrust bearing/washer..

 

[Kent]

Heck no not unless it's within cutter and machine specs. When I was in the machine shop in the 80s there were bits of cutter embedded into the brick walls!,

 

[Spark plug]

This is an accident I had one day:

But I was both climb and conventional milling and the cutter grabbed the corner and spun it in the vice.

 

[graffian]

I climb maybe five thou deep, I tried a to deep cut with a brand new carbide mill for alumium,
If I was a pussy i would have cried as a lovely cutter snapped;-) I was explaining climb milling to
someone, he decided he could hold a router while it was climb milling, we were slotting some
wood for around his roof. He pushed the router into the wood and the wood shot off with the two workmates it was clamped to[I let go of it;-)]
This sort of vice is nice to use, a two speed Hylo.

 

[scottmk1]

I wouldn't try climb milling with that mill @skotl it really isn't rigid enough, never mind the vice or anything else. It really doesn't like it and makes a right racket followed by a bang usually lol.

 

[skotl]

I wouldn't try climb milling with that mill @skotl it really isn't rigid enough, never mind the vice or anything else. It really doesn't like it and makes a right racket followed by a bang usually lol.

Yep - tried it once, on Saturday - didn't like it. Won't try it again

 

[Kent]

It used to be known as 'back milling.' I am the only person in the world still using this term?

No

 

[Seadog]

No

Thanks goodness for that. I thought I was going mad

 

[skotl]

I wouldn't try climb milling with that mill @skotl it really isn't rigid enough, never mind the vice or anything else. It really doesn't like it and makes a right racket followed by a bang usually lol.

Yep - tried it once, on Saturday - didn't like it. Won't try it again

Necro-resurrecting my own thread...

I thought I had it, way back in the 2017s... was just watching a blondihacks vid on youtube tonight and I was convinced she was wrong, so revisited this thread and realised that I didn't even learn my lesson back then. I've still been climb-milling, albeit with very fine cuts

OK - cutter rotates clockwise, piece feeds front left-to-right. Hopefully got it this time.

 

[Brad93]

Climb milling is alright for a finishing cut

 

[skotl]

Climb milling is alright for a finishing cut

Thanks for that: yep - just getting that message now, and that ties in with my experience of taking very small cuts on what I've now realised is climbing.

 

[ukracer]

Necro-resurrecting my own thread...

I thought I had it, way back in the 2017s... was just watching a blondihacks vid on youtube tonight and I was convinced she was wrong, so revisited this thread and realised that I didn't even learn my lesson back then. I've still been climb-milling, albeit with very fine cuts

OK - cutter rotates clockwise, piece feeds front left-to-right. Hopefully got it this time.

I think that but next time I cant remember..lol I might just find a nice diagram and print it out and laminate it.

 

[skotl]

I think that but next time I cant remember..lol I might just find a nice diagram and print it out and laminate it.

Lefty-slightly, tightly-rightly. goosely-loosely. I think

 

[ukracer]

 

[optima21]

was looking for a picture of conventional milling, but they just seem to show them cutting in one direction. When you're milling that's not always the case, so the way you need to feed the material into the cutter is shown below, basically you need to feed the material against the direction of rotation, and the direction of feed will change depending on which side if the cutter is cuttting.

 

[Pete.]

You mean light enough cut don't you ? Trying a heavy climb cut in a manual mill is asking for trouble.

I usually try to climb mill as a finishing cut, as the finish is usually better. Usually no more than .1mm or so.

No I mean heavy enough. You can climb-mill 90% diameter no problem.

 

[Rkweld]

Its a hard thing to try and explain isn't it, I try to explain it like a car wheel, when climb milling it's like a tyre trying to bite in the surface and drag its self along if the mill is not tight.

I do climb mill but as some one already said I do it as part of a finishing pass generally.

Conventional milling is like trying to dig a hole infront of you with a spade with a spade, climb milling is like trying to pull yourself with a rake.

 

[dan.taylor.1]

View attachment 305006

If you look at the picture, you can see the left cutters chip is big to start with tapering down to nothing, the cutter wants to jump away from the work and chatters as that's easier than overcoming the steel to cut it.

The cutter on the rights chip is tapering from nothing to big. So the cutting force is ramped up and is a lot easier to overcome. I suppose in a not very rigid setup the cutter may want to dig in more if anything, but would only be an issue if you've gone mad with cutter size and depth of cut.

 

[My Old Landy]

On a manual mill the diameter of cutter verses the length also comes into play. Using a 20mm long series to square up a block of steel, say 75mm in depth, can cause the cutter to run up the work on a deep cut in climb milling.
I have experience of this If you use a bigger diameter cutter it gives better rigidity and therefore allows a deeper cut. All this is based on the smaller mills with acme screws instead of ball screws