To address the difficulties manufacturers face when performing disc milling operations in hard-to-machine materials, Seco Tools has announced a new line of products, the 335.18 and 335.19 disc mill cutter bodies. Close-pitch insert pockets improve stability and productivity, while plug-and-play internal coolant system further ensures the highest tool life and superior chip control. These features, as well as a new corrosion-resistant cutter body and indexable inserts with four cutting edges, allow these disc mills to outperform high-speed steel alternatives, especially in tough materials like sticky stainless steel, titanium and superalloys.

Seco Tools meets its customers' needs with a complete suite of online services at www.secotools.com. Users may access a full web store and electronic data interchange (EDI) service. The website also has a suite of online applications and up-to-date industry news and insights. Seco Tools designed its website to help users achieve the highest level of productivity for their manufacturing operations.

Precise machine tools and advanced cutting tools together provide outstanding metalcutting productivity. However, the link between the cutting tool and machine spindle – the tool holder – is crucial in fully achieving that productivity. Tooling manufacturers offer a wide variety of tool holder styles, with each engineered for optimum performance in certain machining applications. A machining shop, therefore, should base its choice of tool holders on its specific operations as well as on the parts it produces. Nevertheless, while shops seek to acquire the most advanced machine technology and cutting tool materials, they often place minimal importance on selecting, applying and maintaining tool holders that best fit their specific production needs.

For aerospace shops struggling with holemaking and milling operations in hybrid stacked materials, the new JC899 Hybrid Stack finisher and JC898 rougher from Seco Tools are ideal solutions. The finisher, JC899, features a patented two-in-one geometry that eliminates problems with delamination and fiber pulling out when working with stacked materials such as carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) combined with titanium/aluminum. Together with the JC898 rougher, the JC899 finisher offers three to six times more tool life over conventional drill/reamer combinations and generates pollution-free holes and side walls with perfect surface finishes to deliver up to 300 percent greater process efficiency.

For manufacturers seeking solutions to unpredictable tool life and slow rough-machining speeds when working with heat-resistant superalloys (HRSA), Seco Tools has expanded its line of highly productive Secomax CW100 ceramic insert grades. Featuring new whisker-reinforced geometries, this round line of ceramic solutions offers superior performance for challenging aerospace and power generation applications involving Inconel 718, Hastalloy, Waspaloy, MAR, Nimonic, Rene, Udimet and other HRSAs.

The advanced coating and tool geometry of the new TTP2050 threading insert grade from Seco Tools offers efficient, secure, stable performance, along with the effective chip control necessary to prevent threading chips from ruining critical parts in the final phases of production.

Seco Tools has announced the release of three new grades specifically for stainless steel turning featuring the company’s latest Duratomic^® generation and its Used-Edge Detection technology. The new TM grades TM1501, TM2501 and TM3501 secure operations and improve productivity in materials ranging from austenitic stainless steel to high-alloyed, super-duplex stainless steels. The expanded range of 479 total TM insert configurations also includes three new geometries with chipbreakers optimized for finishing and medium-roughing applications in stainless steel.

From before the Industrial Revolution until the present day, manufacturers have shared common goals: producing a certain number of parts, in a certain amount of time, at a certain cost. Manufacturing processes evolved from craft-made single-item methods to mass production lines and output of increasingly greater numbers of identical parts: a high-volume/low product mix (HVLM) scenario. Most recently, digital technology in programming, machine tool controls and workpiece handling systems are facilitating a manufacturing environment known as Industry 4.0 that enables cost-efficient manufacture of highly diverse parts in small batches: high-mix/low-volume (HMLV) production.

When planning and implementing machining processes, manufacturers generally focus on manipulating elements of their internal operations and may lose sight of the end purpose of their work: assuring customer satisfaction.

Coolant-through tooling components and connectors that interfere with grooving, parting off and other turning operations become a thing of the past with the new additions to JETI (Jetstream Integrated) tooling from Seco Tools. Expansions to the range of MDT (Multi-Directional Turning), X4 (grooving and parting off) and 150.10 (parting-off) tool holders offer interference-free internal coolant capabilities and the choice to switch the underside stream channel on and off as the application requires.