Braze your own carbide tools

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

Hi does anyone make there own carbide tools. I make a few for special jobs like these two for fly cutters. One is for a vertical style and one for an angled style. They cut on opposite sides. A piece of square bar mill the top rake angle, clean the bottom of the tip with a diamond file, then flux and tin the bottom face. Place the tinned tip on to well fluxed shank and reheat till brass runs and make sure tip is in correct position. Allow to cool slowly then grind side and front rake.

David

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

Many years ago in industry I designed and made special tooling for machining the centres of cast bronze steam / hot water valves, I made a tool steel holder, Christmas tree shaped, to hold two brazed on carbide plate blanks. The tool was then located by the shank of the holder in the wire edm machine, and the cutting edges of the carbide were cut very accurately and sharp. These were twice as expensive to make as HSS tools used previously, but lasted 8 to 10 times as long. Never had a brazed joint on these tools fail. Nice to see the technique is still in use.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Carbide silver solders and brazes very easily. I have made lots, mainly hand scrapers out of some of the odd shapes from cheap job lots on ebay. I have also bought 12mm ground carbide stock and silver soldered the ends of steel 12mm indexable boring bars on for solid carbide tooling. Because the carbide is brittle compared to steel, they have a special clamp which spreads the toolpost screw pressure. Also, the chipped and otherwise worn out inserts can be repurposed on steel shanks, brazing saves time rather than screwing them down.

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