A New Specification for End Mills

All of the facets of industry involved with material removal can benefit by the Aerospace Industries Association's development of an end mill specification, NAS 986. The operating efficiency of numerically controlled machine tools will be increased and broken cutter downtime minimized or eliminated when end mills conforming to NAS 986 are used. Geometries of end mills are completely defined to assure uniformity and to provide a means of quality control. A coded identification system is included in the specification. This facilitates identification of the tool geometry and provides a basis for computerized inventory control systems.