Chinese carbide inserts.

There are lots of cheap Chinese carbide inserts offered for sale on the bay etc.

Are they worth buying?

Dave its a bit of pot luck!

I've had total crap and very good!

No doubt someone will be on shortly banging on about how bad banggood is, because they once bought something that was rubbish........

see the below picture for how bad cheap can be!

Jim

I've never had a problem with them. I don't think they are as good as the top brands but then what do you expect at about 10th of the price?

When you buy from sites like Banggood, you deal with basically an agency that co-ordinates sales from thousands of small suppliers, just like Amazon does, therefore the quality of products will vary on a scale from crap to brilliant. I have had inserts from Banggood, they came from Thailand and were equally as good as on sale locally here in UK, the price was about £6.00 including postage for ten carbide inserts, l had no complaints but you have to expect that the quality may vary considerably depending on which supplier you get, it is a lottery but at a cost of only £6.00 I thought it worth a go.

Dave W

Doubleboost on youtube does reviews of banggood tooling. Most seems ok, especially for the price. The problem i have is the very long wait for the goods once you have ordered them. I am waiting months now for a set of parallels for the mill.

The quality of cheap Chinese inserts has risen sharply in the last couple of years and the prices are rock bottom.

They are great for hobby use, and the aluminium specific inserts are fine for use on steel and can easily manage a finishing cut of 0.0005".

I have bought parting off tips [perhaps I should call them inserts ? ] from a supplier on Ali Express and found them to be OK. Like many others ,my parting off skills leave much to be desired but these ones work well enough and it,s no big deal if I break them since they are cheap enough.

Have never bought any of their turning inserts but they might be worth looking at.

I never spend more on cheap bits from ebay than I can afford to lose.

Sometimes they are good, sometimes utter rejects. I got a toolholder that wasn't properly tapped so the screw stopped half a mm above the insert! 'Luckily' it wasn't hard so I was able to tap it to full depth. Probably one of a batch of QC rejects sold on cheap like the insert pictured above..

The better stuff tends to be when people sell off old stock bought from reputable suppliers.

Neil

I agree totally with you Neil.

Too many people buy cheap and expect high end goods.

Cheap tools are a bit like bit like gambling, only spend what you can afford to lose!

Jim

Edited By jimmy b on 15/06/2019 19:42:09

Try Cutwell on line. Reasonable prices and goods seem ok.

Bri

Or do not gamble at home. Sorry. Something close to my heart.

On a brighter note. Take the advice on these forums.

Bri

Anyone still frightened of buying Chinese tools and inserts could try APT, they are very good. They also sell smaller quantities of certain popular inserts specifically for the home market.

Thanks guys.