Rainford Precision - The Bright Spark For Hard Machining

17 October 2014

Building upon the success of the Toglon 'Hard' drilling line from Iwata Tool, Rainford Precision is now delighted to announce the arrival of a new range of milling, drilling and thread milling tools from Union Tool. The new Union Tool Series has been developed for processing tungsten carbides, ceramics, zirconium, silicon carbide and nitride materials up to a hardness of 90HRA (up to 80HRc).

Capable of cutting materials in their hard or fired state, Rainford Precision has undoubtedly carved a niche for delivering tooling solutions beyond the remit of virtually all competitor tooling products. The new line of Union Tool UDC products is aimed at manufacturers in the aerospace, automotive and mould & die sectors that are processing hard materials via conventional and time consuming processes such as grinding, EDM wire and EDM spark erosion.

For manufacturers familiar with grinding and EDM machining these particularly hard materials, the benefit of cutting tools capable of doing the job are obvious with astounding cost benefits. By milling Tungsten Carbide, UDC tooling can eliminate the time, labour, material and overall cost implications of programming and producing an electrode and also setting up and machining with an electrode. This makes the cost of manufacture with a UDC cutting tool negligible in comparison to EDM and grinding.

The UDC line is available with a stub and long length line of ball milling cutters, a series of long neck corner radius cutters and also a line of drills and thread mills that complement the milling lines. Manufactured from a micro grain tungsten carbide that is diamond coated with a unique bonding process that dissipates frictional heat, the stub length UDCB ball milling cutters are available from 0.1 to 3mm radius in 0.05 or 0.5mm increments with an overall tool length of up to 60mm and a length of cut from 0.14 to 4.2mm. With a necked shank, the corresponding UDCLB long reach line is available with identical parameters, but it offers an effective cut length up to 15mm for 5-axis or intricate applications and deeper cavity machining.

For machining flat surface areas with higher material removal rates, Union Tool has also developed the UDCLRS line of corner radius tool with a cutting diameter from 0.3 to 2mm. Each cutter in the UDCLRS line has an available corner radius of 0.03, 0.05 or 0.1mm, a shank length of 50mm and shank diameter of 4mm.

Hole making for these extremely abrasive materials has also been simplified with the Union Tool Series of UDCMX drills. The exciting line of drills has a 130 degree point angle and a 30 degree flute helix that quickly evacuates the abrasive swarf from the cutting area. The new drills are available for making holes from 0.4 to 3.5mm diameters with flute lengths from 4 to 12mm. Well suited to drilling cemented carbides; EDM drilling could be a thing of the past with the introduction of these drills.

Completing the line-up, Union Tool has also created a series of UDCT two-fluted thread mills for the threading of holes from M2 to M8 with a pitch from 0.4 to 1.25. Capable of threading hole depths up to 24mm, the new thread mills will be a welcome addition to machine shops that have struggled with alternative methods in the past.

Machining glass filled plastics, cemented carbides and hard/brittle materials with these specialised tools demands a cutting strategy that requires machine tools capable of cutting from 20,000 to 30,000rpm with feed rates in the region of 750mm/min. These optimal cutting conditions deliver staggering results with mirror finished surfaces and precision levels that are unrivalled with alternative methods of cutting the hard materials.