A 20 minute setup tip that fixed my chatter problem for good

Been running this vertical mill for about 4 years now and always had this annoying chatter on long aluminum parts, especially when I pushed the feed rate past 40 IPM. Last week a guy from the night shift saw me fighting a 12 inch pocket and just said 'you know your stickout is killing you, right?' I had my holder sticking out like 3 inches past the collet nut because I was lazy about reaching in the tool drawer for a shorter one. Swapped to a stub holder with maybe an inch of stickout, dropped RPM from 8000 to 6500, and the finish went from a washboard to almost a mirror. Never realized how much rigidity I was throwing away just to save myself 20 seconds of tool change time. Anyone else have a simple geometry thing that took them way too long to figure out?

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the_matthew24d ago

3 inches of stickout on a 12 inch pocket? How did that even run at all?