Profile milling is an imaging milling process. The name comes from the fact that the shape of the clamped profile milling cutter is transferred directly to the workpiece. The process is mainly used to produce grooves on prismatic workpieces (e.g. T-slots). Other areas of application include gears, dovetail and semicircular guides.
There is a special feature in the profile milling of gears. In contrast to roll milling, the cutting movement here is not only performed by the rotating profile cutter while the workpiece is stationary. It is only rotated by one tooth after each milled tooth gap. It should be noted that a specially adapted side milling cutter is required for each tooth form.
Profile cutters are characterized by the fact that their contour is transferred directly to the workpiece. For this reason, processes in which profile milling cutters are used are referred to as imaging chip removal processes. The advantage of this mode of operation is that complicated contours can be realized precisely and, above all, quickly. This leads to shorter cycle and downtimes. Time-consuming tool changes are largely eliminated, since several work steps can be performed by the same tool. For this reason, profile milling cutters are often used in multi-variant part production.
Very different materials with different properties are used in the manufacture of profile milling cutters. You will also find a wide range of them at Lehmann Präzisionswerkzeuge GmbH.