Tooling specialist Emuge introduced what it describes as "circle-segment" cutters, a class of end mills designed to enable substantially more material removal with fewer passes in 5-Axis machining, over 80% cycle time reductions and up to 50% smoother surface finishes.

The tools are said to be ideal for machining turbine blades, impellers, blisks, and for mold making applications.

New end mills claimed to set performance standards A factor in their performance is that they feature unique forms with large radii in the cutting area of the mills, allowing a larger axial depth of cut during pre-finishing and finishing operations. They have a solid-carbide composition and are offered in four geometries: barrel-shaped, oval form, taper form, and lens shape.

The oval and taper form mills are intended to produce curved shapes such as blades or straight-walled pockets and are claimed to succeed in freely engaging more of the cutting edge. The barrel design mills provide flank milling to the sides of spiral grooves and similar applications. The lens-shaped mills perform in narrow channels or in lands on molds.

Emuge says that specific CAM system software is required to support and compute the geometries of the circle-segment end mills to achieve the performance levels the tools were designed for. It mentions HyperMill (Open Mind) and Mastercam Version 2017 as examples.