Slitting saw trick for deep keyways saved my afternoon in Tulsa

Was cutting a 1.5 inch deep keyway yesterday on a job for a Tulsa pump repair place. The end mill kept chattering and I snapped two bits, each one costing about 40 bucks plus setup time. Tried slowing the spindle to 800 RPM and increasing the feed rate, still garbage. Finally remembered an old guy at my last shop who used a slitting saw with a smaller arbor to rough out the center first, then came back with the end mill for the side walls. Left 0.015 inch of stock on each face and the finish pass took maybe 3 minutes with zero chatter. Anyone else rough out deep slots this way or do you stick to a single tool all the way down?

0 comments

0 Comments

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.