Import cutters and end mills

[Jeremy Smith 2Participant @jeremysmith2]

I see there are a lot of kits on amazon for end mills and lathe cutters. Most likely they are imported from overseas. That being said, are these worth trying, or am I wasting my time?

I know you get what you pay for, but just had to ask to see if anyone had experience with the cheaper tooling. 

Edited By Jeremy Smith 2 on 16/04/2020 07:05:04

[Jeremy Smith 2Participant @jeremysmith2]

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Luck of the draw really. There seems to be a wide variety of quality among the no-name Chinese merchandise.

I've had some very good luck with both HSS end mills and insert lathe tool sets bought direct from China on Aliexpress. But they were cheap enough that if they turned out to be rubbish i was not too out of pocket.

Avoid the sets of brazed carbide lathe tools as they generally need sharpening on a special green grinding wheel before use.

[Involute CurveParticipant @involutecurve]

Buy cheap buy twice, it really is false economy to buy cheap cutters, I have in the past bought cutters from the usual suppliers, and thought they where ok for the price, however after buying some proper expensive ones, that cost probably 4 times the price of cheaper stuff, an example being I bought for a particular Job, 4no 12mm x 0.5 tip rads WMT ALI CUT, thinking I would use them and buy more as the job progressed, I still have 3 new, and the used one has ran for hours making well over 20 pairs of motorcycle yokes for our race bikes, and loads of other bits and pieces, the difference in performance is night and day, I now only buy proper branded cutters because in the end they work out cheaper, give a much better finish, and cut almost silent in comparison to the cheap stuff, I am slowly replacing all my cutters, but find I no longer want to use the still brand new cheaper stuff, and because I have bought quite a few I now get pricing that is about twice that of the poor ones.

I do however understand using the cheap stuff whilst your new to this, because you tend to break cutters as opposed to wearing them out.

Edited By Involute Curve on 16/04/2020 08:33:18

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I don't think it is so much the imported cutters as you can get good ones from the likes of YG-1 who are based in Korea it is more the cheap ones where ever they may be made that can be a bit lacking and sets always seem to be of lower quality as most name brands mostly sell individual cutters.

There is a middle route where the quality is a lot better than the very cheap but maybe not quite upto that of teh name brands for example ARCs premium range is a lot better than their standard but price is reasonable. If you are a beginner that may be the better option as you may well not be using the expensive cutters to their full potential but a really poor cutter will leave you uncertain as to what is giving a poor finish.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

'Buy cheap buy twice, it really is false economy to buy cheap cutters', it used to be a good maxim but things are complicated now as a lot of Chines stuff is of fair quality, the trick is knowing which is which?

Tony

[ChrisBParticipant @chrisb35596]

Don't agree with buy "Buy cheap buy twice"

I bought a set of carbide endmills from a UK supplier which were reasonably priced but not cheap, and they performed well. I next bought an other set of carbide endmills from Banggood and these performed just as good. One thing I noticed is that being cheaper I work the Banggood ones harder.

[Brian GParticipant @briang]

I have bought a couple of sets of cheap insert lathe tools via eBay and Amazon expecting to throw the inserts away. I was working on the basis that it is hard (but not impossible) to make a totally useless holder, and they were good value for the holders alone. I was surprised however to find the inserts were nowhere near as bad as I had expected and produced a perfectly acceptable finish, and that I have gone back to the same sellers for more.

Unfortunately I have never had the same good fortune with cheap HSS milling cutters and will stick with UK suppliers for these. There are excellent products coming out of China, but there is also plenty of rubbish, and having spent years importing finished goods and components from China, I would rather trust a specialist importer than myself to decide which vendors to use.

Brian G

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember32069]

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[Adam MaraParticipant @adammara]

I remember the days when Japanese import cars were declared as 'rubbish' against UK models, its a different story now!

Just look at the cost of buying a new, or even good secondhand Myford lathe, a new Chinese model can be bought for a fraction of the price, good enough for me as a rank amateur, and many other hobbyists by the looks of the number of companies selling them in the UK.

When I was working, it always saddened me that all the major machinery we purchased was foreign, American. Austrian, French, Dutch and Japanese, and a lot of the materials we use are imported.

I have been quite happy with the cutters I bought from Amazon on my little 3018 CNC router, just engraved 6 25mm x 50mm brass plates with 3 lines of text, and the cutter is still good! Snapped a couple of 1.55mm, but that was down to operator error. (Note to self – read the instructions!)

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Jeremy Smith 2 on 16/04/2020 07:04:12:

I see there are a lot of kits on amazon for end mills and lathe cutters. Most likely they are imported from overseas. That being said, are these worth trying, or am I wasting my time? …

There isn't a simple answer.

Making basic tools today there are no trade secrets and modern production processes are largely de-skilled. In consequence it's possible to set up a factory almost anywhere in the world and produce goods to whatever specification is wanted. As there isn't much profit in bog-standard engineering, most Western manufacturing has gone high-technology. Aerospace rather than twist-drills. Country of origin doesn't mean much now.

Another change. In the good old days there was a sharp distinction between cheap & nasty and good tools. It made sense to buy the best once rather than waste money on a succession of inadequate tools that didn't work properly. Today the distinction between good and bad is much less clear cut. While there are still very nasty and very high good tools to be had, most tools are of middling quality, designed to be affordable and disposable. Despite wanting quality in theory, few of us are prepared to pay for it.

In a home workshop middling tools are often more than satisfactory. Even tradesmen have moved towards inexpensive tools: when one wears out, buy another. In the meantime, no worries about breaking expensive tools or having them nicked.

Trouble with Internet buying is it's hard to tell the difference between bargains and tosh. The problem is most acute at the very cheap end. For my part (light amateur work), I prefer buying moderately priced cutting tools from British vendors like Tracy Tools, ArcEuro and the other usual suspects. A bit more expensive than random ebay sellers, but I feel they're more likely to import decent stuff than I am! So far the strategy works for me. That said, ebay and Amazon are often worth a punt because they do sell genuine bargains. Surplus stock is usually the real-thing. It's a bit of a gamble – my rule is no tears if a dirt-cheap item turns out to be a dud.

Buying high-end isn't a guarantee of satisfaction either. For example, you can pay a lot of money for a fairly ordinary cutter just because it's been carefully balanced to run at 30000rpm on a CNC machine. Complete waste of cash if your mill only does 2500 rpm downhill.

I would approach buying tools differently if I made a living out of cutting metal. When time is money, it's unwise to risk dodgy tooling. A professional usually does better by buying reliable tools to minimise downtime. In my workshop, downtime is almost irrelevant.

Dave

[HollowpointParticipant @hollowpoint]

Like others have said its a mixed bag.

From my experience most of the carbon steel stuff like centre drills and taps/dies is complete garbage.

Most of the cheapest HSS tools are pretty crap too.

However the slightly higher priced coated HSS tools seem to be much higher quality. By that I mean the usually gold, grey or blue coated tools like milling cuttets you see for sale individually.

Lastly most of the carbide tools ive used (mostly tips) have been at least adequate to good.

Luckily most of them are cheap enough to give them a try. When you find something good stock up!

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

I fully agree S-O-D.

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember32069]

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[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Barrie Lever on 16/04/2020 11:33:46:

I will say one final thing on this subject, until you have worked with really high quality cutters and other tools for that matter, then you don't know what you are missing. They are like drugs!! you can get hooked.

Same goes for my Snap On screwdrivers, they are just better than anything else that I have got.

B.

Reminds me of my steplad and his Estwing hammer – at the end of the day it's just a lump of metal on a stick, but don't tell him that

Neil

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember32069]

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[Anonymous]

It's instructive to look at the end of centre cutting endmill to gauge quality. A branded cutter will be very different to some cheap cutters, which won't centre cut and give a poor finish. In the past I used Garr cutters on my CNC mill. They were fine on aluminium but seemed to wear very quickly on low carbon steel, so I changed to Gunhring. To be fair the Garr cutters I used were uncoated carbide, so may not have been the best choice. I now use YG and the ARC premium range. Plus cutters from Drill Service for specials.

Andrew

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Barrie Lever on 16/04/2020 14:25:40:

Neil

'it's just a lump of metal'

…

How does this trickle down to model engineering? well through better and cheaper materials and techniques. I want to do some thread milling on the CNC mill as the produced threads are very superior, so I started reading up on it, turns out that it is a technique pushed by NASA a couple of decades ago to increase their quality on hard to machine materials and now people are using it in model engineering..

…

B.

Thread milling's a lot older than that. The link shows it in use during WW1 for artillery shell base threads – look around 28:35:-

**LINK**

[Involute CurveParticipant @involutecurve]

I didn't mention dont buy imports etc, I just suggested don't buy cheap.

This is the finish you can achieve with good cutters .

Dual Filler for a endurance race bike

This is testing the cutter due to long stick out, about 65mm its 12 x 1 tip rad, Clutch Basket again for one of my race bikes, all machined at home in my workshop.

 

Edited By Involute Curve on 16/04/2020 16:14:08

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember32069]

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[Jeremy Smith 2Participant @jeremysmith2]

This is more based on a hobbyist perspective than anything. If endless amounts of funds were available, of course I would invest in the best cutters available.

My question is regarding whether these will last two cuts, or 20 cuts.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Posted by Jeremy Smith 2 on 17/04/2020 03:39:50:

My question is regarding whether these will last two cuts, or 20 cuts.

With the really cheap stuff direct from China you can't be sure, I've had stuff that has been OKish and I've had stuff that simply was not usable. Sets of lathe tools you can often get away with just changing to better inserts* if they turn out to be dud but can't do that with milling cutters

So do you buy 10 cheap cutters and hope to get two cuts from each or one reasonably priced one that will give 20plus cuts and a better finish to boot. That's if you know what you are doing with the cutter and machine, recent thread here where the user was not cutting with the right method and blunted the cutter so its not just the cutter that affects things.

J

* Provided you get sets that take standard shape inserts some sets are quite obscure

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