Here is an idea which will help reduce the cost of machining

It might be necessary to make your own design of tool holders

In order to get the best out of tools it might be prudent to come up with own designs of tool holders.

Often the return on investment is less than a month or two!

We had a cut out milling operation in our rear axle.

Initially we were using a brazed tip end mill and then migrated to indexable tip design.

We realized that with our own design of a milling cutter the expense on buying of new inserts could be eliminated. The used tips are used on the same production line. Users now get the best of this square insert.

We could do the same for one of our rough boring operation on cylinder block crank bore/Cam bore set up on CNC machine.

Tooled up machine used the inserts with smaller included angle. We came up with our own idea to put to use the larger included angle making one of the roughing operation free of insert cost.This could be done for two different sizes of inserts getting used in large numbers.

By Surendra Datar
Tata Motors Limited
Pune