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Solid Carbide Endmills

In the last few years I have been using solid carbide endmills more and more. They work great in the CNC mill, the machine is rigid and the toolholders hold the cutters with just a couple tenths runout. They last very long and the ones for aluminum allow me to run the spindle flat out at 7500 RPM for many of the cutters. Compared to HSS cutters they are a bargain because of tool life and cutting speed. In fact, the carbide cutters are so good now that they even work well on the Bridgeport. The Bridgeport mill is not near as rigid and the collets run out a little more than the Fadal but the cutters don't chip the way they used to. I am very impressed and am getting to the point where I am starting to really dislike HSS for endmills and spotting drills. Just thought I'd pass my exerience along. Eric

Reply to
etpm
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Who makes the carbide endmills you're using?

Hul

snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com wrote:

Reply to
Hul Tytus

Greetings Hul, I use several brands. A local to me brand is Swift Tool. They make some pretty good endmills for aluminum. But MSC and Enco and Western Tool all sell many different brands. Any that are made in Japan or the USA should be OK, at least they have been for me. Really it's just the advances made in the last decade or so in solid carbide manufacturing that have made cutters so much better across the board. There are companies that make the blanks that other companies grind into cutters so even cutters made by a small outfit can be really high quality because of the high quality blanks they buy. By the way, it's easier to make posts more coherent by not top posting replies. Eric

Reply to
etpm

On Saturday, January 9, 2016 at 3:55:32 PM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com wrote: By the way, it's easier

It really does not make much difference to me. if the reply is top posted, I can usually read it and remember what the ori ginal message was ( assuming the reply is to a message posted in the last week). If the reply is to a long message, I usually scan down to the new material and do not bother to read the previous posts.

What I really dislike is scanning down to the new material and finding it j ust says " Me too ". Surely if all that is being said is " me too ", it s hould be top posted. Obviously I think top posting is a valid choice, but sometimes it is better to bottom post. In this case bottom posting seemed the best.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

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