Working with cast iron, what is different?

projectnut said:
Things may have changed over time, but when i was looking for tooling to turn cast iron C2 was preferred. According to the 2008 Enco catalog "C2 is for Cast Iron and nonferrous materials". "C5 or C6 is for steel and steel alloys"

I saved a copy of the catalog for the "Primer" section at the beginning of each tooling section. It gives the preferred material type, profile, coating and other pertinent information to take into consideration when ordering tooling for specific materials. I'm sure that in 14 years some information has changed, but the old recommendations still work.

To John's point no cutting fluid was used.
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sorry, I had that arse backwards. damn.
 
As a follow up, I did some machining on my mill of the rectangular piece. Thanks for everyone's advice. Fly cut four of the faces down to size. Had to make a lexan shield to keep me from being peppered. Covered the mill table with aluminum foil which helped with clean up. Chips flew everywhere, a lot of vacuuming needed to be done.
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I might add one bit of advice, and that is to wear a respirator, or at least some sort of mask. Not only do the little chips fly, but so does the dust. I didn't wear a mask, must of received a big dose of dust in the lungs and had a very bad night's sleep that evening. Next evening was fine. Lesson learned.
 
WobblyHand said:
As a follow up, I did some machining on my mill of the rectangular piece. Thanks for everyone's advice. Fly cut four of the faces down to size. Had to make a lexan shield to keep me from being peppered. Covered the mill table with aluminum foil which helped with clean up. Chips flew everywhere, a lot of vacuuming needed to be done.
View attachment 395163
I might add one bit of advice, and that is to wear a respirator, or at least some sort of mask. Not only do the little chips fly, but so does the dust. I didn't wear a mask, must of received a big dose of dust in the lungs and had a very bad night's sleep that evening. Next evening was fine. Lesson learned.
Click to expand...
well, you had iron deficient blood, now that's all corrected you are good to go. :grin:
 
WobblyHand said:
As a follow up, I did some machining on my mill of the rectangular piece. Thanks for everyone's advice. Fly cut four of the faces down to size. Had to make a lexan shield to keep me from being peppered. Covered the mill table with aluminum foil which helped with clean up. Chips flew everywhere, a lot of vacuuming needed to be done.
View attachment 395163
I might add one bit of advice, and that is to wear a respirator, or at least some sort of mask. Not only do the little chips fly, but so does the dust. I didn't wear a mask, must of received a big dose of dust in the lungs and had a very bad night's sleep that evening. Next evening was fine. Lesson learned.
Click to expand...
Yes! A mask... forgot that recommendation... Funny you mentioned being peppered... that is exactly what happened to me the first time I tried to machine the backplate without implementing the recommendations the folks here shared... That mask, yeah, avoids having black/rusted boogers for days :D :D
 
I d not take any special precautions when machining cast iron. I find the TNMA inserts work best. Sometimes I will clamp a sheet metal chip deflector on top of the cutting tool to keep chips from spraying all over the shop.

There were several turret lathes in the aarea that maachined cast iron exclusively. None had any special protection on their machines.

That cast iron will ruin your machines is a myth. Just vacuum up the swarf as soon as you are done, oftener if you make a lot of swarf.
 
I would think that very fine threads in Cast Iron might not work well, you might chose a coarser thread pitch or make an insert out of steel.
 
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