Insert facemilsl, correct use on hardened Steel.

Iscar is a very good brand. If they fit correctly the face/shell mill pocket, use them. What have you got to loose? As long as the three are balanced - i.e. inserted into alternative pockets, and correct ones for steel.

Try to go at maximum speed, light DOC.. say 0.3 to 0.5mm, and 'feel the feed', to understand the limitations of your machine. As you get happy, consider deeper DOCs, but not too much as you are working with a big diameter face/shell mill. When using your face/shell mill, try to avoid using the full diameter for the cut, to avoid overloading your mill. I think this has been discussed elsewhere in more detail by Jason and/or Andrew.

Ketan at ARC.

Hi NDIY,

There is noting wrong with DB's freebees, as long as it is honest, and as long as the viewer of the YouTube sees and understands what is being demonstrated for the price. There is however a misinterpretation at times that U.K. based sellers of similar looking products are overcharging, and somehow if the viewer buys direct from/through Banggood/eBay, he/she will get a bargain. The viewer may or may not get a bargain, but there are many factors which the viewer fails to take into account, nor does he/she care about as long as the product work for them. Rejects/back door/black market money laundering/clearance deals/subsidised carriage/taxation/U.K.storage handling/labour/rates, are all issues that no one thinks about as long as they get a good deal.

This is not a rant. U.K. importers know what we are dealing with, and we have to just get on with it or leave the business. Lets face it... HMRC doesn't care, and their base in Scotland are happy to hand out VAT numbers to external companies based in China assisted by eBay. It is laughable because many of them don't even pay the correct VAT to HMRC, and when this is reported to HMRC no one really sees any action.

Coming back to DBs videos which are useful in content, he does have some supporters - one of whom is an ex-member of this forum, combined with his brother who is still a member of this forum - unfortunately, who play a tag team to slag-off U.K. importers.. like us, because they still have an axe to grind against the late John Stevenson, who was my friend and sub-contractor for ARC. I don't think that DB is aware of them 'as brother playing tag team', as they have different names. That aspect of the presentation I find disgraceful.

On the other hand, EMMA did a great review. Nothing wrong with the product for the price, and she was honest about her findings.

Ketan at ARC.

OK guys. Back on track. Having spoken to a mate on this subject, who does a lot of machining of things like brake discs etc.. Something was explained to me that I tried out. he asked if I had a digital temp gauge, which I have.

He said do a cut across the face at around 0.25mm per pass. Do not go too fast. Shield yourself from the sparks. Carbide tooling on hard steel sparks like hell. Get your temp gauge ready & as soon as you stop take the temp of the part & the cutter inserts. Which I have done. To my surprise the part was cool & so was the cutter inserts. I did this through to 3mm of cut with no noticeable increase in temperature. The chips were around 5mm long & blue of course. I ran the spindle at 1250 rpm. 

I then removed the cutter & inspected each insert. There is no wear on any of them. He said mild steel should not spark but hardened steel does & this is quite normal. I of course have no idea but everything has turned out so far as SOD says suck it & see. Pretty pleased with the results so far. The finish is like chrome . Pictures & also one of my makeshift shield which worked just. I did not push the feed rate but the machine seemed to stay stable & no drop in rpm.

Steve.

Edited By Steviegtr on 08/05/2020 19:19:35

Job's a good un, that's how Ketan likes to use them too!

I have used a banggood 50mm facemill with 4 APMT inserts to shave 4mm off a hardened lathe insert holder. As you say, lots of sparks and hot chips flying everywhere, but the finish was surprisingly very good. I did use branded inserts tho, as the ones supplied with the facemill were not so good for steel.

Compare the mass of a chip to the mass of a toolholder, guess why the chips get hot but the holder doesn't.

Tony

Indeed Steve

In my defence, I was only following Andrews advice... be it sheepishly.

Ketan at ARC.

Well that is a surprise. I was expecting a hail of abusive comments about how useless I am. Ok I am anyway. But a great result apart from I set a piece of tissue on fire that was sat on the table. Anyway I did a gopro video of doing it & will compare it to the one I did yesterday, with the different inserts in. Seems these are Iscar, carbide Tialon coated or something like that. They stood up well so just another 3 holders to go.

Steve.

I previously on another thread asked about using a facemill on hard steel. I had tried it & got a lot of sparks from them. I stopped the work immediately & sought advice.

The general opinion was that something was wrong. It was also suggested that I had the wrong inserts for the job. So I ordered some inserts which were specified for Cast iron & general hard metals. I fitted these & tried again.

The results were even more sparks akin to bonfire night.

I spoke to a friend who does a lot of car repair work & uses his milling machine a lot. I sent him a short video of what was happening & he said no that is fine. Hard steel can be like that. He remarked that say EN1 mild would not do that but a lot of hardened steel & some types of cast iron do too.

I also tried a Chinese one which was a 4 insert version. This did exactly the same , but the finish was a bit rougher. When removed I could see one of the inserts was just shy of the work. But other than that it worked fine. At something like £23 complete with 10 inserts & the Arbor it worked admirably.

The 6 insert one I have is quite an expensive used item & the inserts alone were £33 per 10. Then this was mounted on a Chinese arbor that was very accurate. So I have carried on using the cutter & the results are on a video should anyone care to have a look.

By all means give me your opinion. But the video speaks for itself. My machine is a Tom Senior light vertical with 1/2hp & MT2 spindle so I did not push my luck too much in the way of depth of cut & travel speed..

Making some sparks

Steve.

Edited By JasonB on 13/05/2020 10:01:03

Hi Steve,

You are not the only one that has experienced sparks when milling hard steel using carbide tipped tools. My experience is that carbide tipped tools work best at a high speed.

Thor

Edited By JasonB on 13/05/2020 10:01:24

Looks like someone bought cheap from bang good or other really cheap site, if they don’t fit properly.🙂 No recourse for complaint, through ebay or paypal, for those purchases.🙂

They might give back the cost if you posted them back for their appraisal.🙂. Otherwise they might offer you ten per cent off. It’s their way of getting something for their rejects instead of scrapping them.

Edited By JasonB on 13/05/2020 10:01:49

Grinding wheels are ceramic. The tool cutter bits are ceramic. Surely using a ceramic insert cutter on hard steel is akin to grinding hard steel with a bench grinder. We should expect sparks rather than be surprised by them. The mill is just a well controlled way of achieving the metal removal (and a good finish) compared to off hand grinding. Good job Steve.

Martin C

I am a little bit confused by what you are saying Steve. Reading through this thread from the beginning, I can't see anyone saying that if there are sparks flying ... that something was wrong. All I read was general advice based on what you posted.

Ketan at ARC

Edited By Ketan Swali on 13/05/2020 11:42:44

Why does anyone with light machines bother to buy expensive cutters and inserts, when there is no way they can provide the ideal conditions to exploit them ? Unless your time is MONEY [and if it is, you would have better machines anyway ] ,you are unlikely to gain very much. As another Member said, these inserts/cutters ect are intended for machines around 20 ton Wt with 20/30 HP motors nailed onto them, talking cuts of around 10mm, not exactly backyard workshop style !

Larry,

It was part of his bargain eBay purchase, see link to thread... which worked out for him.... after he got a lot of advice on this thread. His last response about general opinion from the collective is a little confusing. To understand, one needs to read this thread from the beginning.

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 13/05/2020 12:14:38

I think on of the biggest advantages is that you can use them on iron castings that may well have hard spots or chilled areas. Go at them with HSS and it will blunt the cutter in seconds. Keep using a solid carbide cutter for facing cuts and all you are going to do is blunt the end before you have use the rest. In both cases four inserts at say £3 each will be cheaper than a decent 12mm HSS cutter and definately less than a 12mm solid carbide particularly when you get two or three new edges depending on the shape of the insert.

With the right inserts they will work on most things and again stop you wearing just the end of a solid cutter so work out quite an economical way to machine flat areas, or in the case of the 90deg shell mills vertical faces too.

Don't really agree with your comments about big machines and 10mm cuts. Plenty of commercial CNC use on smaller machines will use these cutters to skim maybe 1mm off the top surface of the oversize stock. They don't want to waste machine time doing 6 or 8 stepover passes where one pass with a facemill will do, as you said "time is monet".

Then there are those that can't grind a flycutter bit so the facemill provides a useful alternative for them to face large areas.

Edited By JasonB on 13/05/2020 13:28:08

Just as an aside, but still relevant, here is a bit of video from Eccentric Engineering showing sparks from carbide tooling that coincidentally popped up on my Facebook feed.

In case the write-up that accompanies it fails to come with the video, it reads: " Sparkly! ">🤩
Milling the two sides that had previously been flame cut was a bit of a light show ">😁
It was quite a bit tougher to get through too going by the marks left by the face mill.
Once through the surface the sparks stopped on the subsequent passes. "

Hope this works, not tried a video before!

**LINK**

In response to why used such a cutter on a small mill. I did try a HSS 3/8" ? from memory cutter. This did not touch the steel. I then tried a HSS flycutter of which it just took the edge off straight away. I have some good quality carbide 3 & 4 flute end & slot mills of various sizes. I have not tried them yet.

I was just giving the 50mm one a try seen as I already had one. Apart from the sparks galore the results were good. I did try taking deeper cuts, but felt it was maybe too much for the machine. That is just my thought, the machine may take deeper cuts but the last thing I want is a great jam up & an eye out. Time is not important so going slow is no problem. From comments given I may try running at a higher speed. Heat does not seem to be an issue so I higher speed maybe the answer. All in all I was happy that the cutter actually worked with only 1/2hp to drive it.

The other one I tried but not shown in the video was a ebay special. It was very cheap & complete. It did perform well but had 1 of it's 4 inserts just slightly missing the work. I did buy that one new & regret not buying from a reputable seller like Arc etc. I have a lot of alloy to work on for another little project & I am sure it will be ok on that.

Steve.

Apologies. Got it, and thanks for clarifying the confusion.

Ketan at ARC