An old timer at the shop in Tacoma told me my chip clearing was lazy

I was running a long job on a VF-2, making a bunch of aluminum parts. An older guy who runs the big 5-axis saw me just letting the chips pile up around the tool. He walked over and said, 'You're cooking your tool and your part, kid. Those chips hold heat like a blanket.' I had never really thought about it that way. Now, I make a point to stop the cycle every ten parts or so and blow everything out with an air gun. I also adjusted my coolant lines to hit the cut zone better. The tool life on that job went up by about 15%, and the parts come out cooler to the touch. Has anyone else found a small change to their clean-up routine that made a big difference in finish or tool wear?

3 comments

3 Comments

felixfisher12d ago

Seems a bit overblown. My tools run fine with chips in the cut.

xena_fox3912d ago

I used to think that too... until I saw what a clean cut actually does for finish quality.

the_margaret3h ago

Remember my buddy trying to finish a walnut table top. He insisted his chipped blade was fine for the final pass. The tear-out was so bad, it added like three hours of sanding to fix the fuzzy grain. He showed me the before and after on a test piece with a fresh blade, and the difference was night and day. Now he swears by a clean cut for any surface you actually have to look at. It just saves so much headache later.