Always climb milling?

[hobgobbln]

I've been watching a lot of CNC videos lately in preparation of my X3 conversion. I noticed that in almost every video they are climb milling for the entire part.

Is that the preferred way on a CNC? I thought you saved climb milling for the finish pass unless you had very stiff machine with a high HP motor.

Griz

[GlennW]

Climb milling is generally preferred if your machine is ball screw equipped. Cutter life is increased and finish finish is better, unless you are working with wood, in which conventional milling seems to leave a better finish.

[Bill Shields]

don't forget that the tool will not undercut by pulling itself into the work, thereby removing more material than programmed.

When roughing, it really doesn't matter unless you are interested in retracting and retracing a lot of path.

[hobgobbln]

When roughing, it really doesn't matter unless you are interested in retracting and retracing a lot of path.

Sorry, I don't know what you mean.

[GlennW]

Sorry, I don't know what you mean.

You sometimes do mixed climb and conventional (raster) when roughing to keep the tool from lifting and rapiding back to the start to do only climb milling passes, unless you can mill in a continuous race track pattern.

[Mid Day Machining]

When you're conventional milling, you're not really cutting your material, it looks more like you're just pushing it out of the way.

[Bill Shields]

not even close to being true (pushing it out of the way).

The mechanism is different than conventional, but it is still very much cutting.

[Rick]

When you're conventional milling, you're not really cutting your material, it looks more like you're just pushing it out of the way

I think what Mid Day is trying to convey is that in climb milling the cutter enters the material much cleaner than conventional milling. There is much less "rubbing" of the cutting edge in climb milling as the cut starts at near full chip load unlike conventional where the cutter starts tangent then builds to the full chip load.