A Great Day at SWIC-Granite City with Sandvik and QTE!

Many local businesses attended our PrimeTurn and Advanced Machining Seminar Friday December 8th at SWIC – Granite City. The focus was educating about the capabilities of Sandvik’s newest turning technology, PrimeTurn, and its co-development with Mastercam. This new approach allows an operator to cut both towards AND away from the chuck, while improving tool life and cycle times. Sandvik Application Engineers were onsite to help answer questions about individual applications, and QTE showed how efficiency can increase two-fold using this new approach. The second part of the presentation, QTE discussed the increased ease and control of advanced toolpaths. We demonstrated how a 5 axis toolpath can be locked to 3 axis motion, and in turn fully utilize the capabilities that some may have been missing. Some key advantages include: greater toolpath control, advanced toolpath entry and exit strategies, and better surface finish.

Live Demonstrations

The next step was to see it all in action in SWIC’s CNC lab. We demonstrated Prime Turning on a Haas SL20 lathe using Sandvik’s A style cutters and 4140. We pushed the machine to the limit and removed material at am impressive rate. We also demonstrated the surface finish of the advanced toolpaths on a 3x Haas VF2. The machine was roughing at nearly 1,000 inches per minute cutting 1018 and finishing passes were over 300 inches per minute. The finish turned out great and everyone was impressed at the speed we were able to drive both machines with Matercam’s toolpath technology.

A big thanks to all of you that made it out to the event, and feel free to reach out with any questions about our Advanced Machining Techniques or PrimeTurn and how we can help implement them in your shop’s processes.