Lathe and milling cutters - seeking suggestions

My advice would be to look at availability of surplus tips to fit whichever brand of holder you end up with. I bought stellram holders some years ago and the angle of the diamond shaped tip is not widely used and so I'm confined to using genuine Stellram tips. Not a problem and the tooling is good but I rarely see cheap tips on ebay etc.

Greenwood set themselves up a while back supplying the model engineer/smaller tool user. Don't know if they are still around but they had a good reputation.

hth

Bob

Yep, good point. Chronos do spares for the Glanz cutters, although I'm not sure how available they are elsewhere.

I managed to find them, but they're a tad pricey - 33ukp and up for a single turning tool. What does one get for the extra cost that the Glanz ones don't provide for about 11ukp each? I've also been told about a German supplier called Deuss...

...page 36 for lathe cutters - set of six tools for 45 Euro (inc Deutsche-VAT, plus delivery).

Greenwood are still around -

They aren't particularly cheap, but the stuff they sell is good quality (Sandvik).

The other dealer that regularly shows up at the ME exhibitions is JB cutting tools -

Their prices are much better & the quality is good too. They used to do a double sided turning tool that used CCMT 0602 inserts - one way up it gave you a left-hand knife tool and the other way up it is a right hand knife - neat idea. Their stand at the shows has tons of surplus stuff too.

I haven't tried the Glanze tools (others may have an opinion) but the price looks good. I bought a cheap set from Chronos a few years back - the Torx screws were made of soft wax as far as I could tell, the holders were badly machined and didn't grip the inserts properly, and the inserts weren't very good either. Apart from that it was great value...the wooden box they came in was definitely the high point. I think these probably correspond to the "economy sets" listed on their site. False economy in this case - for what I paid for the set, I could have had one of the JB holders and had a usable tool.

Most of my turning is done using a RH knife tool - you could do a lot worse than getting one of these in a suitable shank size:

There are also boring bars available that take the same CCMT 0602 inserts, which is convenient.

Although these full sets look very appealing, you can do pretty much everything you need to do with a LH and RH knife tool and a couple of boring bars. Add a threading holder with a TCMT triangular tip and you would be good for cutting metric threads too.

Regards, Tony

To add to what the others have said, I tend to use almost one tool pretty exclusively on my ML7. The style is an SDJCR which uses a diamond shaped insert with a 55deg included angle, and uses DCMT inserts. It's more versatile than SCLCR (which uses CCMT or CCGT inserts) as you can get in close to a centre in the end of a bar, and the longer shape of the insert also lets it get into other confined spaces.

The Sandvik inserts I use in this are DCMT070202, grade MF-1025. These have a 0.2mm corner radius and are primarily intended for stainless, but cut mild steel, alloy steel, stainless, and plastics with equal aplomb and ease, even on my speed-limited machine.

They will also happily cut half a thou' for a finish pass, though perhaps with not quite such a perfect finish as sharp HSS, and also cut up to 0.040" before the belt slip kicks in.

They are fairly idiot proof as regards feeds and speeds and work much better for me than the CCMT style.

Peter

Right back to the shed and the HSS lathe tools and cutters. All my lathe tools are HSS and if they are not cutting too well I touch them up on the grind stone and away I go. Forgot, I have just saved £2.50+, not having to buy a new tip. The tools do not get changed when cutting different materials, ie steel, brass, aly, copper, Cast iron as well. I have to say when I cut plastic, nylon I do re grind the tools before I start to give a sharp edge. Yes another £2.50 saved. I use these on the hobbymat and ML7. Nearly 60 years ago there was nothing but tool steel, and we had to cut everything even on the big lathes 4 foot chuck and 30 foot long, and even on full size loco wheels. The tools were bigger but worked just the same. Buy some HSS and grind your own and save money. Think I should take a stand at one of the shows but the traders that want to sell you the tips and holders would not be happy. I do have one tipped button tool that someone gave me, be do not know were it is.

If you want to go carbide, take a look at the prices of inserts in real tool suppliers catalogs, rather than the folk that supply the hobbiests, and sort out what you can use from there.

One or two good quality holders can make your hobby that much more relaxing, while a bunch of affordable garbage will like to make you look for a new hobby.

That said, the shop I work in sprung for a set of "TMX" branded (pretty close to the quality level of the Glanze stuff I have seen in the adverts, I think)turning tools that use the CCMT inserts, and they seem a reasonable quality for the price. I have no doubt that the screws will have to be replaced sooner than if they were of good quality, but even the top quality ones suggest that the screw is chucked and replaced every few insert changes.

See if you can get on the mailing lists for a catalog or two from a proper tool supplier. Buy a catalog or two if you must. The information is gold!

You could also consider making your own holders for some of the cheaper triangilar inserts.

IMO if you were really impressed with the carbide toolings cutting performance, you should work on your HSS grinding skills. HSS is cheap, and can be rapidly changed to adapt tothe different materials as required, while carbide can be a drain on the fiscal resorces, if one is having a bad day.

A couple carbide end mills are handy to have around for getting past something miserable, but unless you are able to drive them hard and on a rigid machine, you would be better off spending the money on quality HSS end mills. They are WAY more forgiving when being run through material by hand crank, rather than power feeds.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Wally,

Its horses for courses, I have Clarke lathe and use High Speed Steel if I want a shaped tool i.e large radii or thread cutting, if I want to rip metal off in a hurry I use braised carbide tips or throw away tipped tools. You will need a green wheel to keep the braised tips sharp and I use a diamond hone or file to keep an edge on the throw aways. Like most things if you take your time the tools will last.

Martin P

I think your memory is slipping. In 1948 there was stellite rod and tips available and only 2 years later tungsten carbide tipped tools. Separate tips weren't available but I found that stellite rod in conjunction with some other steel as a carrier was handy and flexible.

Stellite is definitely pre-War 1 and carbide probably WW2 Wasn't it Haynes for Stellite? I recall my father carbide tipping a tile cutter long before 1948. I was in RAF uniform then. Last time that I was officially 'engineering'

Somehow I think that our DH Mosquitos were doing the run to Sweden. Again, my father used to wax lyrical about Swedish crucible steels- and he did his apprenticeship in Consett Iron Company. And he could temper steel with a piece of stick as temperature gauge.

Any real old farts out there? I'm nudging 78 now

Norm

Re the history of carbide tips.

During WWII my father-in-law worked for the part of the 600 Group who were making carbide tipped tools.

They were moved from Park Royal to Andrews Boatyard in Bourne End Bucks as a precaution against being bombed.

Parts of the DH Mosquito were produced in High Wycombe Bucks and problems machining the laminated wood were solved by the use of the carbide tipped tools.

There was a wide range of tip sizes produced at that time. I still have a selection which he gave me and very good they are too.

John

Thanks, all, for the many responses. This has made me think more about the tools I reckon I'm most likely to use, and I'm now convinced that choosing the individual tools is the way to go. I had been looking at the sets and wondering how much value they really were - how many tools for free, effectively - but I struggled to find enough tools in the set that I'd buy individually to equal the cost of the set and thus score the freebies. But there's no 60deg threading tool, the chamfering tool only does 45deg one way, etc.

Turns out that the main LH and RH cutters and the boring bar are all I'm really interested in from the set. The ones with the narrower inserts look interesting, and I may get one or two of those with small radius tips.

Not sure what to do about threading - I don't really do screwcutting, but I can foresee a need for M14 x 1mm CW and ACW threads, inside and outside,

10-12mm thread length. There are some threading tools on Chronos (click the photo of the blue box for a close-up of the tools)...

Too big for my lathe at 10mm, but the type looks interesting to my inexperienced eye. Are they any good? Also, what's the profiling tool for? Is it for doing left/right cuts while plunging into the side of a shaft, before finishing the inside corners? Can it be used for anything else?

On milling cutters, point taken re carbide tools on a small manual machine - I'll look at HSS.