Starrag and Walter collaborate in CO2 air cooling gives big boost to cutting speed
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New Starrag machine tools are now being supplied with a CO2 air cooling system, which the company says is capable of increasing productivity by up to 70% when cutting high strength materials. Theoretically Starrag owners can have this award-winning innovation retrofitted to their existing machines.
The CO2 air cooling system, which is now ready for series production, was developed through Starrag's collaboration with Walter AG using an aerosol-dry lubrication (ATS) from Rother Technology.
In a demonstration of the potential of CO2 cooling, a turbine blade was milled on a LX 051 machining centre prepared for CO2 cooling using the Cryo-tec tools. Cryo-tec tools were first used for dry cutting, then switched to the cryogenically-cooled process. The tool temperature was reduced from 160°C to 40°C. With the innovative through-spindle cooling, the flank wear was significantly reduced. Therefore it was possible to increase the cutting speed from 320 m/min to 400 m/min, and the feed per tooth from 0.4 mm to 0.55 mm.
About 64% (exactly 278 cm3) of the raw material (high alloy tool steel X12CrNiWTiB16-13 / 730 Mpa) was removed in only 2.4 minutes, compared to the 4.5 minutes taken by the conventional dry process.
