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Where to buy……

M

MikeANW

Member
Evening everyone. After a weekend of making chips and rewiring my lathe I began to think……..

Where are folks buying their carbide end mills?

:rolleyes:
 
This is question that is followed with a question?

Thrifty And Lucky or Wise? or Lucky?

Thrifty and Lucky is go to some of the online sources recommend by members, not a bad way to start as you are going to damage a few till you get them figured out.

Wise, start into better quality stuff, Higher end from KBC is the bottom end of this scale and on the more expensive side.

Set up and account and order from DeBoers good quality Canadian made true commercial stuff. Comparable to KBC high end pricing definitely way higher quality and worth the price.

Finally coatings if you want a do everything endmill, no coating.

After that remember no similar metal in the coating as you are cutting, this is bad.

One other thing I learned from DeBoers, coatings actual create duller edge, trade of is lasts lots longer. This is only important in stringy materials plastics and some metals, again no coating for the edge at the expense of life.

Don't forget cooling, important with Carbide as it retains the heat, not a problem for the Carbide but for the material being cut.
 
Degen said:
This is question that is followed with a question?

Thrifty And Lucky or Wise? or Lucky?

Thrifty and Lucky is go to some of the online sources recommend by members, not a bad way to start as you are going to damage a few till you get them figured out.

Wise, start into better quality stuff, Higher end from KBC is the bottom end of this scale and on the more expensive side.

Set up and account and order from DeBoers good quality Canadian made true commercial stuff. Comparable to KBC high end pricing definitely way higher quality and worth the price.

Finally coatings if you want a do everything endmill, no coating.

After that remember no similar metal in the coating as you are cutting, this is bad.

One other thing I learned from DeBoers, coatings actual create duller edge, trade of is lasts lots longer. This is only important in stringy materials plastics and some metals, again no coating for the edge at the expense of life.

Don't forget cooling, important with Carbide as it retains the heat, not a problem for the Carbide but for the material being cut.
Click to expand...
I almost entirely mill aluminum (mist coolant + air blast) or plastics (air or cold air without coolant). The only coating of use for me is ZrCN which somewhat reduces chip welding with some aluminum.
 
I think it depends on your volume. I am a hobbiest so I don't do volume. Therefore I'm quite happy with Ali and Amazon for the bulk of my purchases. If my living depended on such things, I might feel differently about it.

I do have some premium tooling though and it is definitely better. I reserve it for my more critical work.
 
kstrauss said:
I almost entirely mill aluminum (mist coolant + air blast) or plastics (air or cold air without coolant). The only coating of use for me is ZrCN which somewhat reduces chip welding with some aluminum.
Click to expand...
DeBoers is "High performance TiB2 PVD coating" very impressive so far. I haven't seen any chip welding so far.

I flood cool, just flushes the chips way.

Their Aluminium cutters are a special 3fl grind geared just for Aluminium. I am currently using their semi finisher for doing the work, as good finish as the finishing 4fl from Niagara Tooling (KBC), additionally less noise. Initial quick playing with it appears to indicate faster feeds rate should be possible, until the ball screws are install 20ipm is fast enough, I'm hoping 30, maybe 40 is possible.
 
Degen said:
This is question that is followed with a question?

Thrifty And Lucky or Wise? or Lucky?

Thrifty and Lucky is go to some of the online sources recommend by members, not a bad way to start as you are going to damage a few till you get them figured out.

Wise, start into better quality stuff, Higher end from KBC is the bottom end of this scale and on the more expensive side.

Set up and account and order from DeBoers good quality Canadian made true commercial stuff. Comparable to KBC high end pricing definitely way higher quality and worth the price.

Finally coatings if you want a do everything endmill, no coating.

After that remember no similar metal in the coating as you are cutting, this is bad.

One other thing I learned from DeBoers, coatings actual create duller edge, trade of is lasts lots longer. This is only important in stringy materials plastics and some metals, again no coating for the edge at the expense of life.

Don't forget cooling, important with Carbide as it retains the heat, not a problem for the Carbide but for the material being cut.
Click to expand...
Thanks all.

I’m mostly cutting steel and some aluminum. I will look at the options above.
 
@MikeANW I used HSS cutters for almost all my years in machining. That is until 3 years ago, when I raided a recycling centre with John N - (To be fair, he set up the deal). They had about 1000 lbs of used carbide cutters, and we were given a single hour to pick them over.

He and I bought over 500$ worth of the best in the bins, many looked brand new or very nearly new. I ended up keeping about 150$ worth, something like 100 end mills. A few of the members here got a few of that lot as well.

One of our members was selling off his father's tool and die shop and John N and I made him a deal and bought 90% of the end mills sight unseen. We were both very happy with the deal, and were able to pass some of them to other members as well.

I bought one Kinnemetal special end mill 3 years ago, but that is the last time I bought new. It was for milling steel hardened to 60 Rc. (not cheap).

I'm still using the same HSS end mills that my mentour, Bert, was using 30 years ago. By resharpening them, they can give years of service. Reasonable quality ones can be had from offshore sources for a song. The ones I bought in times past seemed to be good value for the money. The carbide end mills I got from offshore seemed to be hit-and-miss. Some were great, and others were not end mills at all, and chipped immediately.
 
Dabbler said:
@MikeANW I used HSS cutters for almost all my years in machining. That is until 3 years ago, when I raided a recycling centre with John N - (To be fair, he set up the deal). They had about 1000 lbs of used carbide cutters, and we were given a single hour to pick them over.

He and I bought over 500$ worth of the best in the bins, many looked brand new or very nearly new. I ended up keeping about 150$ worth, something like 100 end mills. A few of the members here got a few of that lot as well.

One of our members was selling off his father's tool and die shop and John N and I made him a deal and bought 90% of the end mills sight unseen. We were both very happy with the deal, and were able to pass some of them to other members as well.

I bought one Kinnemetal special end mill 3 years ago, but that is the last time I bought new. It was for milling steel hardened to 60 Rc. (not cheap).

I'm still using the same HSS end mills that my mentour, Bert, was using 30 years ago. By resharpening them, they can give years of service. Reasonable quality ones can be had from offshore sources for a song. The ones I bought in times past seemed to be good value for the money. The carbide end mills I got from offshore seemed to be hit-and-miss. Some were great, and others were not end mills at all, and chipped immediately.
Click to expand...
Thank you......when i first started machining (too many years ago) all we used were HSS as well. I will try both and see what is working for me...keep me in mind of you find any more great opportunities.. :cool:
 
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