Talk:Machinability

Useful info?

I removed the below paragraph because I don't know if, in its current form, it is at all useful.

Tables and charts that provide a reference for comparing the machinability of different materials do exist, but they are necessarily vague because process variables and other external factors can have a large impact. These tables usually measure the machinability in terms of the cutting velocity for a given tool life. For example, the relative machinability might be given as (v_60_1)/(v_60_2), where v_60 is the cutting speed for a 60 minute tool life.

--Wizard191 (talk) 04:03, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

There are two basic ideas in this paragraph, and they should both be mentioned in the article somehow.

The first is that there *are* reference tables for machinability, but they are flawed. This is actually one of the most important concepts in the article. The first question that a machine shop asks when presented with a new material is, "How machinable is it?" Unfortunately there is never a simple answer to this question. They'd love to be able to grab a reference table, look up some numbers, and know exactly how to machine the part. Instead, since the tables are vague, they have to either machine conservatively (read: inefficently) or conduct a lengthly set of tests.

The second idea is the concept of "relative machinability", which is the most popular quanification of machinability. This should also be included, but maybe moved to the paragraph that mentions Taylor's tool life equation.

BTW, thanks for you recent edits. Emok (talk) 15:33, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, I can work the first 2 sentences back into the text. As for the part on "relative machinability" I think that needs to get fleshed out more before getting put back in, because I didn't understand it as it is worded above. --Wizard191 (talk) 16:25, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

References