Horn threading system saves £££s for oil industry supplier
Wednesday, 07/08/2009
Switching from multi-flute inserts to Horn type 105 single point thread milling improves quality and slashes costs for a Scottish oil industry supplier.
A leading Scotland-based supplier of high technology sub-assemblies for use in the oil industry has made significant savings by utilising helical interpolation thread milling with single point tooling. On one job alone, the switch from multi-flute inserts to a Horn Supermini® Type 105-derived special tool to produce 0.25 inch UN threads saves thousands of pounds per year due to longer tool life and reduced insert cost. In addition, superior thread quality as defined by improved parallelism and cleaner thread profiles has virtually eliminated rework requirements.
The end user company operates in a sector where quality is critical, machining substantial components from materials like 420 grade stainless, 4140 stainless and Inconel 718 using a variety of high quality CNC machine tools. These alloys represent a machining challenge in any circumstance. However the problem is often compounded by difficulties relating to accessing the location of the designated feature.
On the job in question, location of the thread on the front face of a shoulder (see picture) leads to tool access problems. The Horn solution uses a customised holder to maximise rigidity whilst the single point insert generates a high quality thread profile and provides much improved tool life compared with previous solutions, whilst insert cost is much lower.
The company's production engineer commented. “We’re very satisfied with the outcome. The conversion to Horn single point threading has provided all-round benefits for our production process.”