Speed increase leads to batch cost reduction of £5000 and a time saving of 80 hours
As Inconel becomes more widely used it brings its own challenges regarding metal removal rates. Here an application engineer from Helix Tools found a way to save time for a customer supplying to the oil and gas sector.
The challenge
Inconel has many factors to recommend its use in the oil and gas sector, not least among them its corrosion resistance. However, a customer manufacturing a valve seat for a large oil and gas end customer using a 42mm x 5D U drill on a Doosan Puma CNC Lathe asked Helix Tools for advice on how to make the process more efficient.
The solution
The Helix application engineer in partnership with the customer assessed the current process and proposed a new 48mm x 3D drill and a review of the cutting data. This led to a step in the process being deemed superfluous as there was no need for two rough boring cuts resulting in a 30% reduction in cycle time.
The result
After extensive monitoring and trials, it was found that there was no degradation of tool life. The next stage was to review the material’s feed rate, and this was able to be increased by 12%, again with no impact to the finish or the tool life. While there was no change to the annual carbide cost the annual batch cost was reduced by more than £5000 and a time saving of more than 80 hours was achieved