Chilling your cutter with Liquid Nitrogen (LN2). Image courtesy of 5ME.
Have you ever heard of Cryogenic Machining? Better yet, can anyone reading tell us your personal experiences with it?
Cryogenic Machining is the process of using Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) as the coolant for machining instead of ordinary flood or mist coolants. It can produce some amazing results in hard material–good enough to offset the expense of the special equipment and LN2 needed to perform this kind of work.
Consider it a good intro to a fascinating technology. Here’s some cool demo video footage of Cryogenic Machining in action:
Crazy machine tool action for you!
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Bob is responsible for the development and implementation of the popular G-Wizard CNC Software. Bob is also the founder of CNCCookbook, the largest CNC-related blog on the Internet.
That is just too much early in the morning, will be thinking about cool stuff all day now. Honestly though this is an eye opener as I’ve not heard of this process before.
Jim, you raise a good point. I did a little research, and the gist is that there is some thermal shock with Cryogenic Machining, but it is much less severe than with Wet (Flood Coolant) machining. Of course it is absent altogether in Dry machining.
Seems like the benefits outweigh the thermal shock drawbacks.
I also saw a reference to a particular grade of Carbide, K420, that was being used in these applications and claimed to have higher resistance to thermal shock.
Walter Tools have been developing cryogenic machining for a number of years now. Most viable solutions are with carbon dioxide or nitrogen. This is a link to a video using CO2 in the manufacture of turbine blades. https://youtu.be/IvDrMQUejA8
“it’s very Cool Stuff indeed!”
That is just too much early in the morning, will be thinking about cool stuff all day now. Honestly though this is an eye opener as I’ve not heard of this process before.
Thermal shock?
Jim, you raise a good point. I did a little research, and the gist is that there is some thermal shock with Cryogenic Machining, but it is much less severe than with Wet (Flood Coolant) machining. Of course it is absent altogether in Dry machining.
Seems like the benefits outweigh the thermal shock drawbacks.
I also saw a reference to a particular grade of Carbide, K420, that was being used in these applications and claimed to have higher resistance to thermal shock.
Walter Tools have been developing cryogenic machining for a number of years now. Most viable solutions are with carbon dioxide or nitrogen. This is a link to a video using CO2 in the manufacture of turbine blades.
https://youtu.be/IvDrMQUejA8