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  1. #1
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    Default Where do you go to purchase reasonable priced endmills?

    Hi all,

    Being a budget conscious home machinist with a mortgage I am quite frugal (yea OK tight) with my tooling. Rarely is any of my tooling from outside China unless I spy a good S/H deal that I like. So far my Chinese stuff (sourced from places like CTCtools etc) has served me well. However I must say that given I have never used expensive tooling, I probably don't know any different.

    Recently, I have been getting a little disappointed with my Chinese endmills. Sure, they start out nice and cut nice but they don't seem to last very long before the cutting forces increase from loosing their edge and the finish suffers. Given that (at present) I only have a Chinese 45 size mill, my cutting demands are not very high and I tend to take small cuts due to rigidity issues with my mill so I'm by no means tough on my endmills. My cutting speeds and feeds are done by feel, sound and the chip colour and I tend to err on the conservative with speeds. I currently do not have the expertise to sharpen my endmills so once they are spent, they go into a box under my bench.

    Based on the above, I'm thinking that it's the quality of my endmills that are letting me down.

    So, where do people go to purchase reasonable cost endmills? I know the word "reasonable" is subjective so please humour me. I have looked on eBay for S/H endmills and there are many name brand for under $20. I assume they are used but re-sharpened. Are they worth a look?

    I should add that I don't use coolant when milling but once I get the Pacific up and running I aim to since it has an inbuilt coolant tank and pump. Does coolant make a big difference to endmill life? Is it worth the mess?

    Yea I know this is probably a little vague and so I am expecting some heat from some of our (shall I say) less tolerant people

    Cheers,

    Simon
    Girl, I don't wanna know about your mild-mannered alter ego or anything like that." I mean, you tell me you're, uh, super-mega-ultra-lightning babe? That's all right with me. I'm good. I'm good.

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by simonl View Post
    Recently, I have been getting a little disappointed with my Chinese endmills. Sure, they start out nice and cut nice but they don't seem to last very long before the cutting forces increase from loosing their edge and the finish suffers. Given that (at present) I only have a Chinese 45 size mill, my cutting demands are not very high and I tend to take small cuts due to rigidity issues with my mill so I'm by no means tough on my endmills. My cutting speeds and feeds are done by feel, sound and the chip colour and I tend to err on the conservative with speeds. I currently do not have the expertise to sharpen my endmills so once they are spent, they go into a box under my bench.

    Based on the above, I'm thinking that it's the quality of my endmills that are letting me down.
    You may well be blunting those end mills far earlier than you think by taking too small cuts and having the cutting teeth rub.

    Really you want to be taking 0.002-0.004" or better depending on size of cutter per tooth.

    I realise this is difficult to control with a manual feed but there are good reasons cutters blunt early; rubbing is one of them.

    If I'm doing more than playing about I calculate the cutter rpm based on diameter, cutter material and workpiece material, then what I want in terms of cut per tooth and from there what rate of travel I need to set. This gives good results *but* as I said I have the ability to set my power feed speeds.

    I generally buy my end mills etc off of eBay and life seems OK. The TCT ones have gotten so cheap now that I'm slowly switching over to them from HSS.

    Re-sharpening end mills is a PITA. I can do it but don't. Not worth my time for anything under say 10mm.

    If you haven't got power feed on the X, I'd advise adding it. Stefan Gotteswinter has a good YouTube series on building one. Also taking off the table & cross slide & spotting the Y axis ways at least. You may well find they're only touching in 2 or 3 spots. I've seen exactly that on other RF45 type mills. It takes little work to vastly improve the bearing - no need to aim for anything close to 20 PPI, any improvement is good. You'll find chatter decreases as rigidity increases.

    I've recently re-scraped the top slide on my Monarch CY because I could see way too much movement on an interrupted cut. The moving part was only touching in 3 places. At 76 years old I wasn't surprised but it's back to flat and parallel on the dovetails now, still need to fit a new gib I made.

    PDW

  3. #3
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    I bought this set: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HSS-CNC-...ya6CNfZRO0wIRw

    I don't do a lot of milling but these seem like reasonable quality. Haven't had to re-sharpen them yet, but, sharpening end mills is a non event really, quick and easy on the lathe using a die grinder.

  4. #4
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    Thanks guys. PDW, i have x power feed but i must confess i dont always uss it AND i never calculate the feed rate based on rpm and cut per tooth. I guess i can improve on things in that area.

    So TCT endmills are worth a look. I assume you still use HSS for side cutting or cutting using the flutes?

    Cheers

    Simon

    Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk
    Girl, I don't wanna know about your mild-mannered alter ego or anything like that." I mean, you tell me you're, uh, super-mega-ultra-lightning babe? That's all right with me. I'm good. I'm good.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by simonl View Post
    Thanks guys. PDW, i have x power feed but i must confess i dont always uss it AND i never calculate the feed rate based on rpm and cut per tooth. I guess i can improve on things in that area.

    So TCT endmills are worth a look. I assume you still use HSS for side cutting or cutting using the flutes?
    If you make yourself up a little chart for a few cutter diameters for HSS to give you the RPM and feeds/tooth you can interpolate pretty easily. Just double/triple for solid carbide cutters, double again for aluminium, halve or lower for abrasive/tough materials and up the feed per tooth. Then adjust based on what the machine will stand WRT available power & rigidity/chatter. Horizontal mills are plain scary with the cuts they can do.

    I mainly use the solid carbide 4 flute end mills rather than HSS ones in my vertical mills if diameter less than say 16mm. The replaceable tip ones using the APKT type inserts work well if the machine can handle the cuts on bigger diameters, I'm not sure on the lighter mills. The high rake face mills work well. I bought a 63mm one for the B/port recently, haven't used it yet though. I use my horizontal mill about 4X as much as I use the B/port or other 2 vertical mills. Especially for side cutting - a 6" or 8" diameter circular side & face cutter in a horizontal mill simply eats material and I've been doing a lot of cast iron & 316 recently.

    The triangular insert face mills are IMO a sick joke and best binned or given to someone you dislike. I hate the way they hammer the machine and I'm not overly gentle. Next time I go fishing I may re-purpose the 2 I own.

    I just picked up a baby vertical mill with a 2MT taper for a project I have in mind - seeing what it can do will be interesting. The plan is to use 10mm 4 flute solid carbide end mills and mainly cut aluminium/plastics. My expectations are pretty modest, maybe I'll have to drop to 6mm or 8mm cutters.

    PDW

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by PDW View Post
    I just picked up a baby vertical mill with a 2MT taper for a project I have in mind - seeing what it can do will be interesting. The plan is to use 10mm 4 flute solid carbide end mills and mainly cut aluminium/plastics. My expectations are pretty modest, maybe I'll have to drop to 6mm or 8mm cutters.
    I’ll be interested in your findings as they may translate well on to my lathe milling setup.
    Chris

  7. #7
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    The solid carbide endmills on ebay got so cheap that I bought a handful of the TiAlN coated ones on a whim. I figured that at 10ish bucks each, even if they were crap, they were going to need to die four times faster than the sutton HSS endmills I was buying locally to be a financially poor decision. Except...it didnt even come close. They were able to last far longer, or tackle much more abusive materials that hss would be baulking at. I had one of them put to work (in the hands of a student no less) in cutting a whole bunch of bisplate 80 that had been plasma cut. No cleanup of the dross, just start taking 0.5mm passes and she's still looking pretty sharp today. That same end mill started life with a bunch of 4140 rods being squared up on one end. Did the rods and the tool didnt look like it had done a thing.

    Ive been stocking up, ill be finding it very hard to justify buying expensive brand name tools at this point. So far, my experiences have been completely satisfactory.

  8. #8
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    Default Where do you go to purchase reasonable priced endmills?

    Can you please post a link to your seller Scotty?
    Chris

  9. #9
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    The last few I bought were from HERE, but I usually search for solid carbide end mill and find the same product through a number of people. Free shipping if youre not in a hurry, which is part of the reason Im stocking up rather than buying as I need. If you need it in a rush, youll pay for the privelidge. Other sellers have the same product in larger diameters too, Ive seen up to 16mm fairly frequently.

  10. #10
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    Thanks. I just bought a small selection.
    Chris

  11. #11
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    Thanks for your relies PDW and Scott, I appreciate your advice and information. I see what you mean about face mills with triangular inserts. Mine make a hell of a racket especially when it first starts the cut. I just assumed it was normal to make that sound. It quietens down when it starts cutting close to 180 degrees.

    Scott, I am going to try some of those mills. Worth a try for the price.

    Simon
    Girl, I don't wanna know about your mild-mannered alter ego or anything like that." I mean, you tell me you're, uh, super-mega-ultra-lightning babe? That's all right with me. I'm good. I'm good.

  12. #12
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    Attached is a chart I happened to find today while cleaning up - an annual event, one doesn't want to overdo it. I suspect you'll find that your speeds are way low - a lot of mills simply can't go fast enough to use small cutters properly.

    As a set of ER25 collets arrived today I mounted a 6mm 4 flute carbide end mill and buried it maybe 10mm deep in aluminium, running at 2000 rpm. I could have doubled the speed if the mill went any faster and got a better surface finish. A 10mm HSS 4 flute end mill running at 2000 rpm gave a much better finish but I did limit the DOC to 3mm. All hand feed as this machine doesn't have power feed - yet. This is a *very* lightweight & under-powered mill, incidentally, a good Taiwanese knock-off of an Emco FB-2.

    I'm off net again for a while now. Places to go, boats to sail etc.

    PDW
    Attached Images Attached Images

  13. #13
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    I have bought solid carbide endmills and insert tooling from aliexpress, and it has performed well for the price. More than good enough for home shop use. At work we use Garr and Sutton carbide endmills, and they have far superior to the cheapies, but it is hard to justify the cost for home shop use.

    I think you might be going too soft on your endmills, and causing them to blunt quickly. I did the same thing when we first started using carbide endmills at work. For a 10mm endmill with .5mm radial engagement you should be feeding about .1mm per tooth. With no coolant you should have blue chips coming off the endmill.
    I should explain this better, but i'm tired and having trouble putting my thoughts into words. I will try to explain things better tomorrow.

  14. #14
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    Let us know how you guys go with those tools from ebay. You never know, someone might have found a better option than what's here.

  15. #15
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    Thanks everyone. PDW thanks for that table. I have printed and laminated that for future use. While i do loosely follow reccomended speeds, i have never really calculated the proper feed per tooth so i will endevour to improve on that.

    Scott, im interested in thosd endmills so for less than $20 i bought a 10mm solid carbide endmill to see how they go. Cant wait to use it. I have a part i need to make for my pacific mill so it will be fun to see how it goes.

    Snap, thanks. I forget to look at Aliexpress. Thanks fof your experiences and info on carbide endmills.

    Given that my x powerfeed speed is arbitrary numbered 1- 10 (from memory) im going to have to run some calibration tests to convert those numbers into mm or M/min i guess.

    Cheers.

    Simon

    Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk
    Girl, I don't wanna know about your mild-mannered alter ego or anything like that." I mean, you tell me you're, uh, super-mega-ultra-lightning babe? That's all right with me. I'm good. I'm good.

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