In the 1930s, German engineer Carl Salomon showed theoretically that beyond a critical cutting speed, the temperature at the cutting edge stops rising and falls, because the chip carries the heat away. The promise: faster machining, lower cutting forces, higher accuracy. It took over half a century to make this industrially reliable; the MIKRON HSM 700 is where it all came together in 1996.
From the HSM 700 to today's High-Speed Milling
The HSM 700 combined newly dependable technologies: the STEP TEC HVC 140 spindle on ceramic hybrid bearings at 42,000 rpm, 1 g axis acceleration, a lightweight yet rigid structure and a CNC powerful enough for spline interpolation. At these speeds, even a tool imbalance of a few micrometres would have affected surface quality. While others focused on High-Performance Machining, MIKRON MILL deliberately chose HSM.