Our Philosophy on End Mills: Tolerance

When we talk about tolerance we are actually referring to two components of our end mills.  Our shank diameters are held tighter than standard h6 industry specifications of -0.0001” / -0.0003”.  Our Viper and DiamondBack End Mills are held to -0.0001" / 0.0003" on diameter and shank. However, that is just part of the story...

We’ve really concentrated a lot of time on the grinding tolerance as well. When you look at our competitors under a microscope many times you will see that the primary and secondary grind finish looks like a washboard texture because of the wheel that was used to finish grind it with.  

End Mill performance in high speed machining is dependent upon the surface roughness (topography) of the rake face and and relief face of the end mill.  Better, smoother ground surfaces reduce the co-efficient of friction and permit the tool to perform better “in the cut”.  As we talked about in our previous posting with regard to geometry, we make every attempt to reduce the co-efficient of friction that a chip encounters as it is being formed into 6's & 9's in our end mills.  We take special care to insure that our wheels are re-dressed quite often to maintain consistent surface finish. And that has an impact on coating adhesion as well. We'll be discussing that in our next posting.