Face mill

[Peter Simpson 3Participant @petersimpson3]

I recently purchased a two tipped small face mill. The mill came with ten “APMT1135PDER-M2 VP15TF. I realise the mill was cheap so not too bothered if does not do the job.

This afternoon I gave it a go on my Tom Senior mill. Attempted various depths of cut, various spindle speeds. All of the results were poor. I also purchased 10 other tips from a different supplier. Same poor results. Are these 2 tipped face any good ?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Read my article about using inserts intended for non ferrous metal when using these sort of inserts on lighter hobby machines.

An APKT would be better than the APMT that you have such as these 

 

Parts 1 & 2 the second covers the non ferrous inserts.

 

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

I have both APMT 11 and APMT 16 shell mills and holders from 10mm to 63mm shell mills. I would use the H01 grades for use with non ferrous metals to get a reasonable surface finish. They may be intended for much higher rpm than home type mills are capable of combined with flood coolant. The best results on steel that I got was using some ISCAR inserts from a job lot bought for ten cents on the dollar, the full price is very high. I would go for the DO-tool inserts which are available on ebay, Korean and better than average and not too expensive.

[Julie AnnParticipant @julieann]

On my vertical mill I run APMT16 inserts at around 800/1000rpm on 50mm diameter face mill with depths of cut up to 2mm, depending on width of cut. Finish is acceptable and similar to a conventional endmill.

Although not strictly relevant, on the horizontal mill I run a 63mm diameter face mill with 5 inserts at 450rpm and 430mm/min full width and DOC upto 2.5mm which gives a near mirror finish. A higher rpm would be better but the mill is feedrate limited, being designed for use with HSS cutters. The inserts are intended to be run at reasonablr DOC and chip loads for best finish.

All cutting is done dry; I don’t want to spray coolant everywhere.

I have a box of APKT inserts from Arc, but have never used them as I rarely machine aluminium these days. I also find the equivalent polished inserts for lathe work a bit delicate when used on ferrous.

Julie

[Neil AParticipant @neila]

Just a word of warning. In the ISO designation for milling inserts the 3rd letter (M or K) refers to the tolerance on the insert and not to the specific finish (moulded or ground) nor to the material it is designed to cut.

See the following: https://canelatools.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/G_01_MILLING-inserts.pdf

I have been caught out on that one. If using shop-apt.co.uk read the specification carefully.

You don’t say what material you were trying to cut, this can make difference to the finish you end up with.

Neil

[HuubParticipant @huub]

I tried a single flute 10 mm and 12 mm holder with different APMT inserts in steel, 0.25 mm cutting depth, 2000 RPM but neither my BF16 or F207-V mill could handle the cutting forces. It seems the nose radius of these inserts (0.8 mm) and their “blunt” cutting edge is to much for my hobby mills.
A lathe inner turning holder and a DCMT070204, DCGT0702, CCMT060204 and CCGT060204 work pretty well on the mill. It is my preferred milling insert for facing and boring head tasks.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Huub try either the APKT or an APMT in H01 grade as they will be a lot sharper and need less force behind them to make them cut. As the **GT inserts work on your mill these are the milling equivelent. Read my linked article where I say that hobby mills don’t have the power or rigidity to work well with the blunter moulded inserts.

You can also get them with different tip radii just like you can lathe inserts. I linked to a 0.8mm tip radius one earlier a sthe OPs ANSI code is for a 1/32″  ( 0.8mm) tip radius. If you look at the three inserts on the second row from middle to left they are 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 tip radius.

 

 

The other thing with single and to some extent double insert cutters is you can’t feed them as fast as you would say a 4-flute milling cutter or larger multi insert face mill if the chip load is to remain the same. If you don’t slow the feed accordingly, the cut is more like a fast roughing pass than a finishing cut.

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