I recently started running the Tormach Superfly on my PM833. I’m curious what others are using for speeds and feeds on this tool. I am not a speed demon looking to push my tools to the limit, but I watched a few videos from NYCCNC running the Superfly on a Tormach 1100. Here are a few examples of their recipes:
Stock: 6061 Aluminum
Finish Cut: .015 or less depth of cut ; 2500 rpm, 30 ipm, 2.5" width of cut.
Roughing pass: .030 depth, 2500 rpm, 100 ipm, 2.5" width of cut.
Roughing pass: .075 depth, 2500 rpm, 30 ipm, 2.5" width of cut
I attempted these recipes with no luck at all. Please let me know what your recipes look like.
any kind of single point fly cutter is not going to run very fast it’s not a balanced tool. i would start around maybe 900 rpm and see how your machine deals with it being an unbalanced tool. the further your cutter is sticking out the worse it will be. at 2.5 diameter 900 at 15 IPM you can try if it does not work well stuff the cutter in to decrease the diameter of cut and try it.
Thanks Jay. Your suggestions are exactly where I was thinking. 2.5 diameter is the smallest it will go. I have had better results at slower speeds and will try your suggestion later today. For some reason I get some weird hazing on the surface. I guess that it may be caused by the cutter pulling a chip around the surface… Just my guess.
Here are some short videos from experienced operators taking more aggressive cuts and getting great finishes:
what i said earlier was for aluminum. things run a lot slower with steels. surface finish will depend on cutting fluids too. WD40 works good on aluminum i use it quite a bit at home.
Very strange. I did not spend lots of time with the Superfly, however I was surprised to find that as I increased the speed, I got much better results. My last run was .030 DOC, 2.5 WOC @ 3000 rpm. This is way faster than I thought I would need to run it, but as soon as I increased the speed, the finish improved. I will revisit this later.
i use it quite a bit at home.