Features
The milling cutter comes in different sizes and shapes. You can also choose from several coatings as well as the inclination of the rake angle and the number of surfaces for cutting.
- Shape. Milling cutters used in the cutting industry are of different kinds depending on the application used for the cutter.
- Teeth or flutes. The flutes referred here are the deep grooves running the cutting machine. The sharp blade that runs along the edge of the flute is referred to as the tooth. The tooth is responsible for cutting the working material and the chips of the material are pulled by the flute through the rotation of the cutter. Most of the time, for every tooth, there is always one flute. However, there are some cutters that have two teeth in every flute. Oftentimes, people used the tooth and flute interchangeably. Milling cutters usually have one to as much as 4 teeth. Usually, it will follow that the more teeth your cutter has, the more rapidly the machine can remove materials. So if you have a cutter that has 4 teeth, the rate by which it cuts material is twice compared to a cutter with 2 teeth.
- Helix angle. The flutes are almost helical. If the flutes were positioned in a straight line, the whole tooth will impact the material at work at once which will cause vibration. The vibration in turn will reduce the accuracy of the cutting process and will mess up with the surface quality. When you set the flute at a certain recommended angle, this will ensure the tooth to enter the wood piece gradually, thereby reducing vibration. Usually, the finishing cutters have a tighter helix in order to give a better finish to the product at work.
- Center cutting. There are some milling cutters that can plunge directly and drill straight down the materials. Others though cannot do this. The reason for this is because the teeth of some of the milling cutters do not go all the way to the center part. The good news with these cutters is that they can cut downwards at a 45 degree angle.