LESSON LEARNED

Alben Engineering (Brisbane, Australia) is not only John Roberts? means of supporting his family, it?s named after them ? Alben being a combination of his children?s names Alexandra, Lara, and Ben. And when you?re a one-man operation, there?s no passing the blame for poor performance. Tools and machines must perform according to expectations if customers are to be kept satisfied and your business is to grow.

Roberts started his company about two years ago with a machining center and two CNC lathes. His shop produces a mix of parts for various industries, such as flight boxes for aerospace customers, gearshift levers for automotive manufacturers, and complex parts for medical suppliers.

Earlier this year, drilling an induction-hardened pin made from high-alloy 4140 steel had been giving Roberts problems. To achieve a thru-hole in a 300 mm pin on Roberts? equipment required drilling a 150 mm hole from each end. The rigidity and rpm capabilities of his CNC lathe were sufficient; the problem was that his indexable drill kept breaking off in the hole. "It got to where this required constant supervision on my part," Roberts recalls. "You couldn?t walk away from the job. If the drill breaks, you?ve got a big mess on your hands." Not to mention at more than $100 per drill, production costs escalate quickly.

When Roberts? tooling supplier suggested drilling pilot holes, adding time and operations to the job, Andrew Guy, senior technical sales engineer with Kennametal Australia in Queensland, suggested a test with the KSEM modular drill system.

The system features steel drill bodies with a stable-four-wall pocket at the tip, where a carbide insert specific to the job at hand provides the cutting edge. Hole depths of up to 10XD up to 40 mm or 1.575 in drilling diameter are standard.

The grade Andrew selected for the test was KC7315, a PVD-TiAIN-coated universal fine-grain grade with high wear-resistance at higher cutting speeds. "It?s the first choice for alloyed and high-alloy steels as well as cast iron," Andrew says.

Performed at Alben Engineering on Alben equipment, the test entailed running Roberts? original setup as a baseline, then with the KSEM system for comparison. With the cutting speed set at 70 m/min, spindle speed at 891 rpm and feed speed of 267.3 mm/min, Roberts achieved one hole per edge, breaking two drills to produce one pin.

With the KSEM system and KC7315 insert grade, not only was Roberts able to drill a batch of 25 parts (50 holes) with only minimal wear on the cutting corners, he was able to increase his cutting speed to 95 m/min and feed speed to 363 mm/min. "We could have run the feed at an even greater amount, but we were getting push-back on the job due to the smooth surface," Andrew reports.

Where Roberts would have required 400 inserts per year under his old setup, eight of the new inserts would produce the same amount of parts at higher speeds, saving tens of thousands of dollars in tooling costs alone. More importantly, Roberts? productivity is up, and the reliability of the new tooling allows Roberts to "get in and get the job done," in his words.

At the end of the day, he says, it solves the problem and solves it well ? a lesson any father would find worthy to impart to his children.

Kennametal Inc., 1600 Technology Way, Latrobe, PA 15650, 724-539-5000, www.kennametal.com.

Alben Engineering, Unit 4/ 87 Gardens Drv, Willawong, QLD, 4110, Australia, Ph:(07) 3711 5100, www.albenengineering.com.au