Go deeper? Shops often fail to realize what good candidates they are for a heavier and more rigid machining center. When the Boeing Research and Technology group talks to shops about how to machine titanium more effectively, members of the group talk about tool paths, tool parameters and tooling techniques -but they also talk about tool costs. One of the sections in our study of titanium this month {beginning on p. 74) discusses these very costs. Sticking with a cheap tool is likely to be a false economy, because the tool that forces a shop to slow down or make frequent tool changes might cost more in lost output than what the shop is able to save on the tool price. Many shops that have looked seriously at their production costs have come to precisely this conclusion.
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