It's interesting, fillets are not just the most expensive part of the hardware, but of the software too. Geometry kernels have entire teams dedicated to just developing the filleting tools.
Here's a tip for designers considering a dovetailed O-ring groove: Assembly mechanics have lots of tricks. I worked on.. er... a fuel system, for brevity's sake. When there was something like an O-ring to keep in place long enough to bolt together, a smear of petroleum jelly was great for just making it stick. Whatever your fluid medium, there's likely a bulk lubricant that's compatible. So just get the trepanned groove. ;-)
Never thought about it as I come from the 3D printing world, but it's good to know. From a purely aesthetic point of view I think chamfers look better, anyway, and it sounds like that's not a huge issue for external chamfers, but you'll never get a tool with a sharp corner so I imagine internal corners are still a problem to think about.
Very good video. I'm learning as machine design engineer, but I spent a little time with CNCs and regular mills/lathes, but even so I wouldn't take all of this into consideration (simply because I haven't use every tool mentioned here). It is probably EVEN MORE useful for people who don't have experience on machining. Such things should be taught in depth for every engineer who's likely to design anything, but I mostly see it taught to people who specialize in manufacturing.
"It's a world with two measuring systems..." Well, it's almost down to "A world, and then there's USA with a different measurement system." 🤣 To be fair Australia and India is also still dragging their heels 😜
I’m Canadian and we do not use metric in our machine shop doesn’t make sense I can’t stand when I have to have a ream a hole 9.6 in millimeters. It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.
Shit, I run a 750 ball nose indexable hanging out over 7 inches shaft is carbide. I don’t have a choice when I’m running a three access machine trying to machine a pocket 12 inches deep.
@adamthemachinist Hi, can I hire you to consult on tool design? Need punch/press tooling for low volume runs. (Sorry can't find Demuth Tool and Design contact).
@@arduinoversusevil2025 Always happy to exchange info for free, you’ve entertained me enough over the years that it seems fair . I have the same name as the channel on Instagram. Couldn’t figure out how to message you my email on here, and don’t really want it openly posted
@@aaronhammond7297 any parts cutting is done thru cam. The crashes and accidents I’ve had in my career have generally been related to typing in the control , so I avoid hand programming anymore. Thats not for everyone, some shops need to adjust the number of cuts made on big castings or weldments , a simple variable change can accomplish that. A probe can also be used to check the stock and update that variable without human interaction . But lots of bigger machines in the American industrial scene are quite dated do to the replacement cost. So there is still a demand for manual g code programming, but not in my shop
Excellent overview and friendly resume of things to watch out for when drawing up CNC parts, much appreciate the friendly and helpful overall tone of the video. Expressing things in a matter of cost is a beautiful way to get across the intricacies of engineering to people who have not worked with the wonder that are CNC machines.
I agree, but I would prefer to say inexperienced designers make parts expensive. I use to run a shop for years, and years ago... today I like to visit (when possible) and talk to a shop before/durring part is design. For all the reasons you mention. Early on I thought a part would run on a vmil, turns out they decided to run it on a multi axes bar fed lathe. after we talked we got cycle times down per part price down and we ended up making more parts
Would you be interested in making an Udemy course in cost-effective manufacturing? I would love to see how designs can be tweaked to become cheaper and easier to manufacture. If you ever do this let me know. I'd sign up right away.
I completely disagree. I have 300 years in cnc and 500 years in bla bla bla. Jokes aside. This is cool to know. Just unfortunate that most of this info goes way over my head. For my 3d printer, i normally use chamfers instead of fillets just due to the line stepping issues and looks.
I keep coming back to this video for inspiration. Love your channel! I've been in Wire EDM for about 2-3 years and only recently came to a shop where i was doing it full time. This inspires me to learn more and hone the craft, exceed expectations whenever possible. Grinding is something I have very little experience with, and these tips have definitely helped the few times I have needed to use it. Keep em coming Adam!
I really appreciate this as an engineer recently out of school. School weighs much more heavily toward theory than practice, so this is the kind of knowledge that seems obvious once you think about it, but just hadn't occurred to me before.
Very suspect. There appears to be no feature present at the bottom of the tool that would remove material. Also, while there are chips being removed, they don't look proportionate to the amount of material that would typically be removed by drilling a hole.
I would argue inside corner fillets = good and outside corner fillets = bad. As for chamfers it's the other way around. Speak to your machinist what tools they are using most commonly and ask them what ball nose end mill sizes they use to get your desired insie fillet feature. Luckily the time I did work a lot with part design and machinists was with a very specialised company that did almost only do tooling for big casts (like big ship diesel engine blocks) and CFRP molds and the people there were always very helpful when it came to helping out with the design process. They did work almost exclusiveley with polyurethane tooling foam so it wasn't as bad as in working with metal, but that stuff had a tendency to break easily on sharp corners or narrow ridges and those had to be avoided at all cost...
My absolute proudest moment at mechanical engineering school was to build an entire extruding machine with 600 bucks. Including motor, gear box, extruding barrel, heaters, and I repurposed an extruding screw that we found on scraps. I spent a lot of weeks designing for that prize target. In my countrynat the time a new motor with these characteristics of power and revolutions was around 2.000 bucks. I first designed everything for the new parts and a teammate was in charge of prizing the parts. He never actually prized the motor, he just asked another team with different specs to give him the quotation. Grave mistake... I finishes the design and we were about to purchase the motor and I then realized this guy didn't do his only job. We ended up finding a really old motor and gear box for 100 usd. I had to design the entire machine again to fit these new parts, all the couplings, measure the motor to add them on CAD so we had it leveled... It was a huge pain in the ass 😂. Never cut corners.
