Milling Machines - Security Initial Security Always

Technology has taken the bull by the horns in milling machines as much as is has in any of the manufacturing technologies. The enhanced abilities of these machine kinds, in addition to the new cutting tool technologies, have vastly improved towards the point exactly where milling machines are operating at lightning speeds as in comparison with just 30 years ago.

With the improvements in milling machine capacities comes an increased require for education and education in the actions needed to operate these pieces of gear safely as well as correctly. A number of the crucial security locations that need to be regarded are:

Work-piece clamping Cutting tool conditions Proper machine guarding & safety glasses

Work-piece clamping

Severe injury, or even death, can occur if a part shoots out from the machine at high velocities and were to strike the operator or some other innocent bystander.

With newer milling machines capable of traveling over 1,000 inches per minute (that's over 83 feet per minute to put it into a different perspective) and many cutting speeds for some materials in excess of 100 inches a minute, the clamping ability of the CNC workholding operate holding devises is of critical importance. With cutters moving into the function piece at significant RPM's and feed rates, the potential for throwing the perform piece out in the machine has been significantly enhanced.

Therefore, it is important that the machine operator loading the parts into these machines be ever-vigilant in making sure that clamps and vises are properly actuated towards the correct clamping pressures and that parts are loaded onto their fixture points correctly. Process documentation should define the correct torque ratings for the clamping mechanisms too as designating the correct tools to use to verify that these specifications have been met.

Cutting tool situations

There is a constant danger that cutting tools could "explode" while performing their function in milling machines and shards could easily injure anyone near the machine at the time that this occurs.

It is common knowledge among those that have performed machining for many years that sharp tools cut freer and require less horsepower to do their job than when the tool becomes dull, chipped, or losses a cutting tooth. Therefore, it is important that management takes the necessary actions to educate and train its machine operator's in how to determine when tools are getting dull or otherwise really need to be replaced.

Fortunately many milling machines have been developed have controller's that will monitor spindle horsepower draws and automatically stop the machine (or exchange the worn tool for a fresh tool) if a certain horsepower draw is exceeded. Operators should be trained to monitor these features and exchange fresh tooling for worn tooling before reaching this point.