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At the trade show in Chicago, a guy showed me his shop runs a full dry cut on aluminum with no coolant.
He says it's faster and cleaner, but I've always been told you need coolant to manage heat and chips. Has anyone here made that switch?
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jana_hayes316mo ago
That sounds wild, but maybe their tooling is just that good (and expensive).
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eric936mo ago
Right, @jana_hayes31? Good tooling feels like cheating sometimes.
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the_eric6mo ago
Our old Haas at the community college shop would smoke cutting 6061 dry. I swore by flood coolant for years. Then I saw a demo with those new variable helix end mills, the ones with the crazy chip flutes. They ran a half-inch tool at 18,000 rpm, dry, and the chips just flew out blue. It wasn't even that loud. The finish was like glass. Totally changed how I see chip control.
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