CNC milled race horseshoe

That's damn cool, I didn't know they even made race horseshoes!

@Adam Kep Triple Crown race horseshoes.
They were made from size 0 to size 12 and sometimes machined with a corrective angle on them to fix lame horses.

Very, very nice!!!

@Vinca The toe area on each shoe are machined to a proprietary radius (trade secret ) that enables a horse to gain 1/4 inch on the nose with each stride. Second place IS the first loser

That is curious, but not surprising about the radius / geometry being custom fit to the horses hoof...... Is the material straight up 6061, or are you using some propitiatory alloy as well ?

@Marmot The shoes were blanked out of 6061 T6 3/8" x 8" rolled flat stock four at a time. They were nested so a minimum of material was wasted and help in place by four small.125 inch thick taps left so they didn't break the endmill after the profiles were completed.

The CNC machining center ran full shifts during our operating hours unassisted except for removing finished shoes and adding new blanks to the fixture about once every twenty minutes,often for several weeks at a time.There was a dedicated shelf for them in our loading dock because we always tried to keep stock for instant delivery.

Most of the original stock from these operations ended up in the scrap bin due to design restrictions and work holding capability.

The endrun customer,not our direct customer specified that they had the .125 depth x .1875 inch width nail grooves milled into each shoe that served no purpose to their function. That operation alone added twice the machining time to each part,in the name of "tradition".

After we delivered the shoes in ordered quantities of 50 to our customer,they were placed in a mould and had kevlar cloth attached to them with a polyurethane cushion to protect the horse from receiving impact shock when running.

The kevlar cloth was applied to the hoof with an adhesive which was used in place of nails in a regular horseshoe because nails can split a hoof and render a horse lame and often impossible to repair.

These were by no means intended to ever be placed on a work or pleasure horse due to their inherent lack of durability