What lathe tools

Watch some of the sets of indexable tools as they have some very obscure tips. Try to keep to one or two tip shapes

I would go for 12mm unless you intend doing a lot of heavy work and buy individual tools rather than sets which tend to have ones you will seldom use.

Assuming you are looking at indexable tools then I would go in order of most used:

R/H turning, this will turn along the work & face CCMT type tip

Parting

6mm &10mm boring bars CCMT, 16mm is nice for deeper holes

Through turning to use the other two sides of an 80deg tip

L/H turning handy for facing larger items and working away from the chuck

Most of mine are Glanze but also have a look at Greenwood who are usually there

Edited By JasonB on 13/01/2013 19:59:30

CCMT, it describes the general shape of the tip and is what most of my tooling takes, readily available in a range of sizes and material specific versions.

I use three types of parting tool, A narrow 0.050thou HSS one (chronos ref PTO000) good for small work below 1/2dia, 3/32 HSS in the holder for my Dickson QCTP and a 2mm Glanze jobbie

Nothing to add to Jason's advice. The designation CCMT is the first part of the ISO description of tool inserts:

C - Rhombic shape, 80º nose angle

C - Relief angle 7º

M - Tolerances ±0.013mm

T - Single sided, partly cylindrical hole, with a 60º countersink, ie, held by a central screw

Following numbers describe the size of the insert, the nose radius, the thickness and more. By far and away the most common insert, sold by most distributors, professional and ME.

Regards,

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 13/01/2013 20:49:33

Thanks for the replies.

Yes a 16mm should bring the cutter right on the center line I am told.

I will check it before I go though.

Chris

Hi Chris,

Try this reference for an explanation of both ISO and ANSI designations for defining standard carbide inserts,

As a hobbyist now I must admit that I tend to stick with good HSS tools and prefer it for parting.  If you have low speeds on your machine large diameter parting is no problem, they arise when the diameter becomes small and the tendency is for the tool to submarine and be pulled into the work when using a front mounted tool.

Regards

Terry

Edited By Terryd on 14/01/2013 16:35:55

I must admit that I get better results from HSS but I have always put that down to user error.

Edited By chris j on 21/01/2013 22:03:33

I've seen the through hole bars and drills used on large industrial machines with very high feed rates and 20+HP on the spindles, but I can't imagine a home shop would benefit from them. They are for industrial ops where large metal removal rate is critical (read great big swarf - 10 chips to a pound kind of ops)

The motor on most hobby lathes would almost drive the size of coolant pump you need to properly feed through-hole drills and bars with 80 psi plus coolant.

Just my opinion - save your money for something you really need in your home shop.

JD

I thank you for your opinion.

Actually they don't seem incredibly expensive.

I probably should have included a link.

Jason

Just reviewing your post.

What did you mean by "through turning" please.

Chris

Because of the angle of the cutting edge (100deg+ 5deg clearance) you cannot turn upto a sholder so either have to turn right through to the other side or use the tool to take out most of the waste and then swap for a right hand tool.

Here you can see where I roughed out the crank for my firefly and you have to leave the sholder at an angle. You can take a good cut with these 0.100" if your lathe is upto it.

Then go back and tidy it up.

Edited By JasonB on 27/01/2013 15:56:24

Brilliant, thanks that makes complete sense.

(I wished you lived around the corner)

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