Advent Tool & Manufacturing released its indexable form milling platform for involute splines, spur gears, "V" shaped gears, and various form racks. According to the company’s press release, Advent used a standard shell mill body in a horizontal machining center, precision ground form inserts and a patented system for insert location based on their thread milling design in order to provide a platform with which to mill serrations on the bottom of a yoke. With the system pictured, Advent Tool has two forms on the insert in this case: one form for roughing and one form for finishing. In addition to vast productivity gains from carbide, as opposed to high-speed steel construction, Advent Tool (in this application) uses a three-tooth form in the cut, which further enhances throughput over a conventional single-tooth involute cutter. Machining occurs with a qualifying pass with a standard milling cutter to obtain a uniform height on all of the cast lugs. The roughing tool uses 14 inserts and runs at 600 rpm and 14 ipm feed. The finishing tool runs with seven inserts and the same speed and feeds. Advent says the finishing tool removes approximately 0.0005" of material in a single pass. Both tools consistently see 10,000 parts before experiencing insert wear. An important feature is the class of fit in thread milling terms. Even a slight deviation from one tooth to another will adversely affect the form of the serration. As such, lining up of the inserts in the z-axis is key and the system allows for this. The new solution is part of a continuing company strategy to tackle difficult form generation applications in the metalworking arena.