A selection of threadmills. Image from harveytool.com
A Threadmill is a cutter used in CNC machines to obtain threads of material internally or externally. Although it competes with tapping as a method of obtaining the best finishes on the surfaces it’s worked on, many crafters out there still prefer threadmills as their main choice of tool to work with. This is closely related to certain factors such as quality and control.
For an instance a broken threadmill never gets stuck on the surface you are working on, and it offers a number of exchangeable heads that can be customized to be larger and more durable going in accordance with the type of job you are doing. Threadmill cutters are also the best option when it comes to working on hard materials such as metals. And they don’t generate the same amount of chips as tapping.
The Things You Need to Consider Before Getting a Threadmill
If you are choosing to work on a treadmill, there are few things you need to know before getting one. The first course of action is getting the tool you need for the right job. There is no such thing as a universal threadmill. Almost all of them are suited to perform a specific task. You need to consider things like the profile distortion that comes from working with the wrong diameter thread.
You also need to pick between plain profile or spiraled threads depending on the amount of flexibility you need for a job and the number of threads you need to use given the field you are working on. The good thing about most of these specs is that they are available online and many expert handlers are more than willing to tell you how to make the right choice.
This is How You Threadmill
Getting to work with a threadmill requires some levels of precision and measured strength that can only be applied in accordance to type o equipment you are handling. Every threadmill has a different type of feed and speed. This is how you handle these machines:
- The first thing you need to understand is the correlation between the tool and the material you are working with. If you don’t understand how that works, you probably need to ask an expert or check a couple of tutorials that go over this topic (which is quite extensive and would need a separate blog post to talk about it).
- Once you have that part figured out you need to clean the working space and place the right flutes on your CNC threadmill. One universal piece of advice to do the job properly is to pick a flute with measurements that don’t go over 70% of the actual diameter of the holes.
- Since you are dealing with CNC threadmills, you probably need software to handle the job and manage the right depth and width of the cuts or holes done to the base material. Most of these programs will allow helical interpolation for more elaborate tasks. Use it just if you know what it is for.
Last but not least there are considerations to be had about the drilling methods. Most of the times the customers hand out their own set of specifications such as using reverse rotation or synchronous milling. Each one has their set of pros and cons, but that is up to the engineering department to figure it out.