Quality end mill cutter that last long?

I bought some end mills from China and they don't seem to last very long, I am always buying in bulk and I had bad luck with 2 manufacturers already, very inconsistent quality.. I found them on Alibaba.. Do you guys have any tip about a a China manufacturer that provide good quality end mills that last long, especially one that is not too pricey. Thank you.

Hi Lucas,

Welcome to the forum. For quality HSS cutters I buy Dormer branded cutters,

Thor

Hi Lucas, welcome. If you don't have a lot of experience at milling then only buy GOOD quality cutters, at least then if you have trouble the fault will not be the cutters. Stay with the known brands and suppliers. If your in the UK then give ARC euro a try there on here. Good luck. Noel.

Alibaba, Aliexpress and Banggood are I believe not manufacturers just shops so sourcing from them is a gamble? I do use cutters from Banggood and they seem OK, have a look at Drill Services, UK based and 'fairly' reasonable. Also are you a highly experienced machinist able to judge the quality of cutting tools and using the right speeds and feeds? Just asking

Tony

I recently bought a selection of ARC premium slot drills and end mills, very pleased with them, cut well and seem to be holding a sharp edge despite some hard use. Previously bought Dormer and Sherwood cutters and these are a safe bet, sometimes found on offer in sets.

Dave

If anyone is unsure of feeds and speeds the tables in Tubal Cain's model engineers handbook will point you in the right direction.

Hi Lucas

You don't say which material you are milling but on aluminium I have found this supplier sends good cutting quality cutters at reasonable price but not the cheapest, I use the 3 flute for most work.

As said ARC also sell a fair range for most materials.

**LINK**

Emgee

Lucas, you don’t mention anything other than source. Acheck on your machine run-out could be useful - large run-out can shorten cutter life considerably.

It is probably worth buying some top quality cutters from a reputable supplier and using them with the correct speed and feed. Manufacturer speed and feeds will apply to industrial machines with professional setup. The hobby workshop will usually not be able to match that performance so less ambitious cuts and feeds will likely be required. You can ruin a cutter if the feed is too slow allowing the cutter to rub rather than cut. Having established that a good quality cutter used correctly gives a satisfactory performance or if it doesn’t then examine your setup. Cutters do not have an infinite life so are your expectations realistic? Once you know what your machine can do with a good cutter then a useful comparison can be made with budget cutters. The direct import sources from China can be anywhere between total junk and very good but how do you know? There is no protection from consumer law in the UK for these sources so you are on your own if the goods are not fit for purpose. Buying from a UK supplier with a reputation to protect that is often hard earned and easily lost is worth paying a little extra for and consumer protection laws are in place. Uk suppliers back their imported products with their reputation so they choose carefully who supplies them and aim to provide a good service. A very cheap price and dissatisfaction often go together but sometimes you can be lucky.

Mike

China makes decent quality end mills and slot drills, but they cost! You will not find them on Alibaba or similar set ups. Good quality is expensive wherever the cutters come from.

Do yourself a favour and buy good cutters, they last much longer than the Chinese dross, so it doesn't work out to be that expensive after all.

Andrew.

You have not specified material being cut or the size of cutter you are using. I would add to the earlier posts by saying that if you are cutting aluminium or one of its alloys then you do not want to use coated cutters, only polished ones such as HSS with a nice shiny finish. The other thing to consider if you are removing a lot of material is a carbide insert end mill to remove the bulk of the material before changing to a sharp HSS end mill to finish to size. I also agree with earlier posts that you need to be sure you are always cutting and never rubbing when using an end mill. You should be creating well defined chips and not dust or fine needles of waste.

Martin C

I have no idea if this is good practice, ( feel free to cut me down in flames if it isn't, i'll not be offended.)

To extend end mill life i use the flutes for cutting whenever possible rather than the end.

Working on the theory that the flute cutting area is much greater so will wear out more slowly.

Roughing (ripper mills) seem to last well. Personally i prefer the fine pitched ones for my tiny mill.

My mill is only a hobby one and i can't cut deep when doing steel. Most cutter wear is on the tip. I use HSS-M2 type cutters (the hardest HSS without Cobalt) and when they are dull, I will grind the tip (0.25 mm) to sharpen them again. Doing so, my HSS cutters last several years.

For just flattening the workpiece, I use (some are self made) insert cutters (DCMT & CCMT). That works OK for me.

Beware that the top layer of steel (hot rolled) is pretty hard and will ruin a HSS cutter fast.

For convenience you might want to try FS Wizard. It is available as an app for I phone and Windows. The limited version is free. It gives appropriate speeds and feeds for a variety of materials and several cutting tools.

"To extend end mill life i use the flutes for cutting whenever possible rather than the end."

Yes I say it quite a lot as you are paying for flutes all the way up the sides you may as well use them. My hobby mill will happily take a decent height cut in steel and I think I've gone upto about 35mm on aluminium. Just don't get silly with by combining a large vertical cut with a large stepover.

Pickle Hot Rolled first to remove any scale

Thanks guys for the thoughtful answers, I feel I got a lot of useful information beyond even what I asked for.

The only thing I didn't wrap up is a tip about a Chinese supplier, really the name of the company. My only possibility is buying those end mills from China since I am already importing many items from there. Preferably some company who is already at Alibaba so I can find it and talk with them.. It would save a lot of painful working time on tests and wasting money with customs, since testing tools from different companies is very hard, especially to get consistent results.

By the way I got great information throughout all answers, great forum. Thanks again,

Carbide endmills 4 Flute:
I bought these from a reputable company on sale, so far they seem to last very good, and with aliminium I see no welding to endmill cutting dry. It does seems to work well with chips if I just coat the endmill with cutting fluid from time to time. I received another set, but have not used it yet. They probably like coolant.

I dont have a name but here are some info: I used them on aliminium no problem.
End mills for General Purpose
● Suitable for steels & cast iron(≤48HRC)
● High performance alcr series coating, high temperature resistance and high wear resistance.
● Adapt to several kinds of cooling conditions, for example oil mist, water, oil, air cooling.

That's normal operation, and is how the cutter is intended to be used. Unless one is plunging the cutter into the work vertically the flutes always do the cutting. Even for shallow depths of cut. The teeth on the end are ground slightly hollow so they don't rub when cutting horizontally.

Andrew

I'm a convert to the solid carbide ones - they give a beautiful finish on steel, aluminium, cast iron and bronze; I use the maximum speed the machine is capable of (3000 rpm), and usually dry (aluminium may need some WD40 etc., depending on grade)

I got them from the MSC Advantage Flyer list - not super cheap, but not absurdly unaffordable either.

The biggest cause of failure with carbid cutters is when the cutter is entering and exiting a cut. When hand feeding, its really important to be winding as evenly as possible to the finished length. If the end is open, then slow down for the end run out and be slow at the start of the cut. When hand feeding, and if you are erratic or have an actual stop, then in reality it should be a slow restart. I rarely run my mill faster than 1200 rpms and find the cutters lasting a long time of cutting. Keeping the swarf away is another big life enhancer, so where possible, I have the vacuum cleaner running to dray away the swarf. Sometimes I need a gentle air blow when down in slots, as the vacuum wont draw out the swarf. As I am a home hobby milling , I have not yet filled the mill or lathe coolant tank. I prefer to use a light coating of cutting oil and be conservative on the feedrate. When cutting some bearing lately, the 3mm cutter came from a NZ supplier and labelled as hard cutting. I bought 2 as I was certain it was going to wear or create burrs after just a few bearing shells, but it lasted for the whole project. Cutting the bearings was 200rpm and just a slow stead infeed for the small distance of around 0.35mm or so.

Where ever possible I avoid black scale bar. If I have to mill it, I get onto the linisher and take most of it off on two sides. Then with usually a tip end mill, cut under the skin from the clean end face. The outer skin on black bar just destroys tooling.

With my new DRO it has rpm readout of the spindle. Its really handy to know , as you can work out roughly how fast to wind the handle per second or per minute to get the feed rate for the cutter being used. Some dro's now have the mm/min feedrate on the axis you are winding which will help with cutter life dramatically.

The important factor is not how long it takes the cutter to reach its end of life, but how much metal is removed during that life. if you run the cutter without cutting anything it will last for ever, but the result isn't very useful.

Maximising metal removal over the life of the cutter means using correct feeds and speeds, and maximising use the flute length. Doubling the depth of cut doubles the metal removed without affecting the cutter lifetime. Chip removal is vital too, as mentioned above.

There are two rules for buying cutters:

1. Don't waste money on cheap cutters

2. See rule 1

I use YG-1 K2 cutters from Cutwel for general machining, and have also found the premium cutters from Arc to be excellent.

Andrew