Carbide Tips from Hong Kong

I've just received 10-off small carbide tips: DCMT070204 US735 DCMT51.51

...for which I paid £4.69 including carriage. Supplier is in Hong Kong, and actual lead time was 12 days.

After a couple of moderately aggresive cuts on silver steel, they seem good. This price is of the order of a tenth what they'd cost from a UK supplier.

Is this part of a dastardly plot to defeat our own tooling distributors by undercutting them with loss leaders?

Have our own suppliers been ripping us blind?

Or, as I suspect, is it a bit of both?

Anyone else have any experience to share about cheap tips from abroad?

U.K. distributors are not ripping you off.

There are various factors to consider:

- Depending on products factory origin in China, it costs us much more to buy than what you have paid, in the real world.

- the said inserts may be acceptable for your use, but could also be rejects for specific application.

- We aim to supply on basis of consistency. The HK seller may have a job lot - very common practice.

- Some may be legitimate sales, some may be back door sales, and some may be black market money laundering.

- Shipping is done through uncle/aunt corporation accounts. Difficult to explain until you are in that kind of environment.

- We in U.K. have to pay all kind of taxes, and we have to observe the law.

This is our - U.K. suppliers view on this. This is just the way it is, and we have to accept it. We - ARC have reported various illegal issues to HMRC, but there is very little interest on their part to do anything about it.

So, life goes on, enjoy your inserts, but please.. we the U.K. sellers request you to avoid suggesting that we are ripping you off, as this is far from reality.

Thank you.

Ketan at ARC.

never had a problem but have a sneaky idea that most of what we buy, shall we say at normal prices are just rebadged chinky gear anyway.........

remember Taihwan stuff was shall we say was pony to begin with........now it's up there with the good'uns........

it all depends on the cost cutting aXX-hole accountants that order in the cheapo gear, hence the bad reputation for Chinese materials.......

have heard that certain European roller bearing manufacturers have their bearings made in China.........

it's just quality control.......

buy the cheapo stuff and if it goes bad just bin it.....

shame European manufacturers think they can charge what they want....spose u can if it's tax deductable.....

memories of the crap that the Brit motorcyle manuf's used to turn out.....

rant over..........clogs

I really doubt they would be as worth while as a branded tooling system. But I can't comment without having used anything but generic types.

Michael W

Recently I have seen where a well known brand was being counterfiet in China and sold as this brand. The packet and label looks identical. The product looks to a casual observer as being the same. But a close inspection shows this is not the case. Not saying what you brought is a knock off , but it is happening. These knock off tips that I have seen don't have the tool cutting life of the genuine article. But home hobbiest seldom get the same cutting volume off an insert anyway.

Neil

I have bought some inserts from HK / china as well & they seem to do the job as good as 'Branded' inserts, & being on pension status, along with many others I know, cost is a factor for me, but there again I don't do anywhere as near as much cutting as a production set up would, in fact I haven't done any lately... must remedy that...

George.

Is it genuine or a cheap clone? Tools, inserts are the same as electronic assemblies from China.

Assume a production line making carbide tips and the customer wants 1 million - does the production stop when that number is reached? Or do they continue to make more and sell to local stockists for next to nothing.

I have had electronic assemblies from China that cost less than the postage here in the UK but all were well made and worked. I have no doubt that there are cheap clones, the Arduino boards are a classic example, obviously a rip off clone just by looking at it.

How to spot a lower quality item, not always easy but you have a number of options, pay top wack price, go to a reputable dealer or take your chance and see what you get.

It reminds me of third part batteries for digital cameras, there is so much cr#p on the camera forums you would not believe it. If it bothers you pay the manufactures inflated price (£60 - £80) is not uncommon.

If it bothers you take the hit, if it doesn't there are plenty of reliable clone manufactures at a quarter of the price, just don't be stupid and go for the cheapest. I like to think the average person on this forum is above average intelligence and quite capable of making this sort of decision.

If you make a detailed breakdown of every monetary transaction involved in any UK production process from buying land to paying workers and then separate all of the taxes paid out you will see that there is actually very little real money moving anywhere. Im not against taxation but it accounts for a huge percentage of cost, which is one reason why we cant compete with some other countries.

I have just tried some cheap APMT tips. They did not survive one pass over a 7"x5" casting.

All what one may say is that European governments are regulating and taxing industry to oblivion and oblivion they will face or actually facing now.

Manufacturing is done in China and in the UK we are left with *hobbies*. Serious manufacturers are moving to Asia, all what is left here are traders who are trying o screw you up and a taxman who will screw you on the top of it.

Many of these traders are pretending to be manufactures by stuffing Chinese stuff to boxes with label "made in UK, in Germany, in EU" etc.

Wonder how long it will last?

Perhaps to oblivion of domestic tax revenues? It is a real pity that stupidity of our bureaucrats cannot be legislated out.

PS.

Recently bought high quality Chinese boring head with 2 boring bars and 10 carbide inserts for price of 10 mid grade 12mm Sandvik inserts...

If users of the cheap imports find them effective then they've had more success than me. I purchased a few supposedly Chinese imported carbide tips but their cleaness of cut was very poor on my lathe set up. I then tried "expensive" Iscar tips and their performance was a revelation e.g. when taking a 1 thou cut on silver steel rod. A comparison of the cutting edges on both new inserts under the microscope revealed why.

(At x200 the depth of field is extremely narrow).

Being no expert whatsoever on such tips, I just now purchase the branded tips based on performance and have no feelings about being 'ripped off'.

Which is which? The LH one (looks to be TiN coated) has an apparently smoother finish, but the RH one looks sharper - and you mention 1 thou cuts.

I can't actually recall *ever* using any tips that made a particularly clean job of 1 thou cuts on stuff like silver steel, and that's one reason I've preferred HSS for most jobs for most of the 40-odd years I've been machining.

In the light of what you and Ketan have said, I'll try some 'definite' branded tips and see.

What part numbers did they claim for these 2 (clearly very different) inserts? The RH one looks like a ground, uncoated insert. You'd expect them to behave quite differently. There are many hundreds of different geometries, surface treatments, chipbreakers, nose radii etc available. Apples and pears?

Murray

The LH image is a tip purchased from one of our well known suppliers at a M.E. exhibition whereas that one the right is an Iscar, purchased from JB Cutting Tools again at an exhibition (usual disclaimer; but ever-friendly service).

**LINK**

JB's webpage (above) describes them as 'ground and polished inserts'.

As for Ag steel, I can repeatedly take a self-act cut of one thou on my S7B and the Iscar produces a continuous fine coil of swarf ~ honest !

The one downside with them, at least in my hands, is that they're very fragile. For instance, an inadvertant light contact with a stationary chuck jaw will chip the cutting edge. By contrast they'll keep their edge when subject to some pretty deep, continuous cuts into tough steel.

But do treat the above comments as strictly those of an amateur !

I just bought a face mill from Banggood along with a 10 pack of APMT tips. They seem to work ok on aluminium with a light test cut of a few thou. Trying a piece of mild steel they were awful - I stopped a ten thou cut before the mill shook itself to bits and tried around three thou. The finish looks like the back end of a badger.

However, on looking around at what is available I have to say that there might be something in what the op says. Prices vary wildly, even for name brands. I see Axminster are selling no-name APMT 1604 tips at around £14 each. No idea what the quality is like and I'm unlikely to ever find out at that price. Some name brands on eBay are available for around £25-30 for 10.

Hi Mick,

The real issue is not about brand. You said you were happy with what you had purchased, and that is great.

The issue is more about consistency. Also, as Murray says:

'What part numbers did they claim for these 2 (clearly very different) inserts? The RH one looks like a ground, uncoated insert. You'd expect them to behave quite differently. There are many hundreds of different geometries, surface treatments, chipbreakers, nose radii etc available. Apples and pears?'

If something works for you, and if you can get the same consistency going forward, then that is fine too. All i was suggesting was there are many reasons for price differences, rather than a British trader ripping off anyone.

Ketan at ARC.

ARC sells named and un-named brands (namely CCMT and CCGT types). ARC knows the exact source of un-named as well as named brand which it sells. The maker of the un-named brand supplies us a a specific - consistent quality. We are unable to buy un-named or named brands from the original makers at the low prices regularly suggested on eBay, Banggood or other similar sites. The real reasons are stated earlier.

Ketan at ARC

Edited By Ketan Swali on 21/09/2017 15:11:47

Edited By Brian Oldford on 21/09/2017 15:32:15

I accept Ketan's comments and acknowledge my relative ignorance of the intricacies of "hundreds of different geometries, surface treatments, chipbreakers, nose radii etc".

If model engineers find a tool which does the job to their satisfaction where's the problem? My point was merely that the unbranded tips, I maybe misguidedly purchased, performed badly in use. Consequently I tried an Iscar insert in the same toolholder and was satisfied with the results obtained. I've no idea what, if any, the claimed part number was for the unbranded tips and I doubt the "well known" seller did either. These are the two tips in question at x10 magnification. The unbranded one (left) had been used once only on the upper tip.

To appropriate that common stallholder's cry to customers "yer pays yer money and takes yer choice".