"Better" is subjective. Some people prefer sharp defined corners, some parts look better with them also. Chamfers and deburring is actually one of those things that instantly jumps out on a machined part for me. The uniformity, or the lack thereof stick out like a sore thumb. There are times when I look at a part and think it looks like shit because the machinist used a Noga tool instead of programming a chamfer tool and it doesn't fit the rest of the part, or why is that chamfer 0.015" and that one over there 0.02"?. In general, I don't really
care either way, I'm firmly waaaaay more on the practical side vs the OCD side of machinists, but that's not to say I still don't actually notice the little details like that. It's tough to turn off. At the end of the day, do what ever you wish, however you want. Unless the print calls for it, then do it like that
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Story time (for shits and giggles).....at my last job I designed and built these "hinge drops" (think precision hinges) for our fixtures. We could buy them and often did, but I came up with a better design that was more versatile in a few ways that we could shop make much more accurately and a bit more cost competitively vs buying them. The were also scalable so I could easily make one offs bigger or smaller if needed. I made the machining fixtures, soft jaws, and programmed them incorperating 0.025" chamfers with a 90* tool, or directly into the 2d toolpaths in every op so when they came off the machine, there was no deburring and zero hand finishing required. Just blow them off and paper wrap them in a box to go straight to anodize. We (I) made hundreds in small batches over the years.
Fast forward about 7-8 years, a couple new customers wanted a different locking design. Ours used a captive thumbscrew, they wanted a 1/4 turn knob. Cheap labour has trouble with righty tighty/lefty loosy i guess....So I had to redesign the model, and redo everything to make the new method work. I was now too involved with other stuff to do it, so another programmer/machinist took on the task of actually making them after I finished the design. He didn't see value in programming the chamfers in the machine because it was too hard, and the cycle time was too long, and he preferred to do it offline in between cycles with a noga tool, router and files.....Same parts essentially function wise but IMO they looked like complete dogshit compared to the old ones with chamfers/edgebreaks all mismatched for size, and zero uniformity, vs the crisp clean sharp edges from a tool. Cycle time wise he was about the same overall per part sure (new design took a bit longer), but the original point of making them in house was also to do batches in between busy times, simply to keep the spindles running, and guys busy working during slow times. I'd set them up to run with 4 vises on the table, one for each OP, so that every button press (~23 minutes) two finished parts came off, and it didn't really matter if the machine sat idle for 5-10 minutes after running before I got back to it to shuffle parts down the line. He did the ops in batches, and deburred after each cycle. Tied him up the entire run, while I was able to design/program other stuff while I was also making parts. Two different methods, very different results. Didn't matter one bit for the end use, it's just tooling so who really cares? Subjective.....
IMO this is one of those grey areas you can't really teach. Sure you can make a callout on every drawing specifying 0.025" 45* chamfers on ALL edges (and be
THAT engineer.....), or simply a note about breaking them. Everybody is going to see and do it differently and have varying levels of "good enough" for whatever pleases their eyes. Uniformity is easier to achieve with a 45* tool, as it's the same no matter how you present it to an edge. I've never had a PM reject a part or tool buyoff for lack of uniformity of the edge breaks, but I have had them comment that it looks like shit......It matters a hell of a lot more on cosmetic consumer grade parts. We had great machinists that you could absolutely NOT give those types of parts to, not that we did a lot of that, but sometimes. I have a couple good stories about those too, but another time lol.
Anyway, long rant (and a lot of shits and giggles) to basically say, you either notice the details, or you don't, then from there you either care about them or you don't. To each his own. I almost always notice them, but I don't always care if that makes sense. Depends on the part and situation.. Across the same part, I'd prefer them to at least be uniform comparatively. Noga tools create more rounded corners with unequal legs kinda like your tangent tool, so if you're going to use one, at least use it on ALL the edges and make them the same. Don't router some edges with a chamfer tool, others with a noga, and then jab a file at others you can't reach with the former two. I'm a fan of all of them for various reasons depending on part geometry and end use.
