{"id":3611,"date":"2022-03-31T14:42:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T14:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.zecha.de\/?p=3611"},"modified":"2026-10-12T09:33:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T07:33:42","slug":"iguana-milling-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zecha.de\/en\/iguana-milling-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"IGUANA MILLING CHALLENGE"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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IGUANA MILLING CHALLENGE<\/b><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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CHALLENGE ACCEPTED – STILL SHARP<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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MICRO TOOL IGUANA<\/strong><\/p>

CONQUERS GERMANY’S TALLEST STRUCTURE<\/p>

At the end of 2021, ZECHA Hartmetall-Werkzeugfabrikation GmbH and AlienTools GmbH went live for the first time in their companies’ history to find out: “How long will our IGUANA tool run?”<\/p>

Never before had anyone in the industry taken on such a challenge and broadcast a long-term milling test via live stream. But what prompted the IGUANA MILLING CHALLENGE?<\/p>

Having won the 2021 Innovation Award of the State of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, and to prove at the same time why the IGUANA tool technology had been honoured, we simply let the tool run \u2013 for as long as possible. The goal was clear: one tool, one machine, and the task of covering milling paths.<\/p>

No sooner said than done. On Thursday, 16 December 2021, ZECHA and AlienTools went live. During the live event, medals in various designs were to be milled non-stop from high-quality 50 x 50 mm copper blanks (E-CU \u2013 CW004A) \u2013 all with one single two-flute 1 mm ball nose end mill from the IGUANA family. The innovation behind this tool: laser technology is used to sharpen the diamond-coated cutting edges, resulting in a perfectly sharp and precise edge. This considerably extends the tool’s service life.<\/p>

Under the watchful eye of VDWF President Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Seul and several thousand live viewers, the milling test was proactively ended after an astonishing 30 days in order to free up the in-house KERN milling machine for other projects.<\/p>

At first glance, both the medals and the tool itself looked unscathed after an incredible 641+ hours of milling and a milling distance of more than 27 km. Almost unimaginable when you consider the distance covered by a cutter just 5 cm long.<\/p>

During the live event, the IGUANA micro tool milled its own length 546,288 times. Compared with Germany’s tallest structure, the tool managed to mill the height of the Berlin TV Tower 74.2 times. And if that doesn’t make you dizzy yet, take the tallest building in the world as a reference: here too, IGUANA proved its staying power and milled the height of the Burj Khalifa 32.9 times.<\/p>

All of this called for close examination. And so the measurements began on our in-house metrology equipment.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The results under C-View, SEM and Nano-Focus speak for themselves:<\/p>