Milling Bearing Pockets in Hardened Steel

[JRB Blades]

I have a blade (MagnaCut HRC ~63) that I am considering adding some bearing pockets to. It's a liner lock folder and is currently running on PB washers. It works well enough, but was curious about how it would do on bearings. I have carbide end mills that I normally use when milling bearing pockets into Ti, but have never attempted it on hardened steel. I'm guessing it's doable, but wondering if any of you guys have some pointers so I don't ruin this blade! It's a prototype, so would never be sold anyway, but would rather keep it for myself and use it.

I use a rotary table and a 5/16" flat end mill to normally do the pockets. RPM is usually 400-500 give or take. With the Ti, I'll go down .020" and spin the table, then move the X axis out and spin the table again. Then go down to my final depth of .0425" and spin the table before bringing the end mill back to center and spinning the table again.

Thanks for the input.

 

[HSC ///]

A short stub carbide end mill and a rigid setup. Good luck

 

[JRB Blades]

A short stub carbide end mill and a rigid setup. Good luck

Oh yea. I’ve got the stub end mill and the rigid setup. Have a couple of scrap blades that are hardened that I’ll practice on first!

 

[Contender Machine]

I’ve done it quite a bit in a cnc mill with great success. I use a stub 1/8 carbide endmill at 65 sfm and .0005 feed per tooth. So about 2000 rpm and nice and slow on the feed. Without flood coolant you’ll want to slow that rpm down a lot

 

[JRB Blades]

Thank you for the information! I need to grab an 1/8" end mill and give it a go.