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Tools for Milling Titanium Efficiently

ISCAR provides a rich variety of tools that are specifically designed for milling
titanium. This section is intended for quickly selecting a suitable tool family for the
most typical milling operations that require machining titanium components. MILLING TITANIUM

Indexable Extended Flute Cutters
for Milling Deep Shoulders and Wide Edges
A considerable part of milling titanium, especially in producing large-size parts, relates to
removing a high volume of material during rough machining of various cavities and pockets. A
common way to do this is by applying indexable extended flute (long-edge) cutters. These mainly
have a cutting edge angle of 90° and perform peripheral milling of deep shoulders. In addition,
these cutters are the first-choice tools for machining wide edges of workpieces (edging).

Referring to the most popular ISCAR families of extended flute cutters, Table 21 and
Table 22 prioritize the families and Table 23 specifies their general design features.

Table 21 Indexable Tool Families for Milling Deep Shoulders

1st choice 2nd choice Possible
MILLING Rough XQUAD HELITANG MILLSHRED
DEEP EXTENDED FLUTE T490 LINE P290 LINE
SHOULDERS
Semifinish HELITANG XQUAD MILLSHRED
FIN LNK EXTENDED FLUTE P290 LINE

Table 22 Indexable Tool Families for Milling Wide Edges (Edging)
1st choice 2nd choice Possible

MILLING Rough HELITANG XQUAD MILLSHRED
WIDE EDGES T490 LINE EXTENDED FLUTE P290 LINE
(EDGING)
Semifinish HELITANG XQUAD MILLSHRED
FIN LNK EXTENDED FLUTE P290 LINE

Chip splitting and chip chopping in milling titanium
The desire to improve performance and increase the dynamic behavior of extended flute
cutters led to the use of inserts with a chip splitting action. The cutting edges of these
advanced inserts feature specially designed chip splitting grooves. Further developments
have resulted in the introduction of inserts with chip crushing ability, that literally chop chips
into small segments. Advances in powder metallurgy allow the production of tough, sintered
chip crushing inserts with high-strength shredded cutting edges, such as ISCAR’s indexable
MILLSHRED P290 - a family of extended flute cutters that adheres to the more common
concept of clamping inserts radially. The main distinctive feature of this family is the serrated
cutting edge of the inserts, which chops or shreds the chips. Unlike many chip splitting inserts
that are currently available, the P290 one-sided inserts, which possess two indexable serrated
cutting edges, do not require special instructions for mounting in the MILLSHRED extended
flute cutters, and are simply secured in any pocket. This operator-friendly feature simplifies
tool assembly and eliminates errors in insert indexing, which may cause tool destruction.

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