My Humble Carbide Review

[farmersammm]

Recently, I switched to carbide cutters for the mill. It's a mixed bag.

This is a shoulder thingy that has to ride in a slot.

Rough in was with a fine pitch 3/8 roughing mill. I don't like the fine pitch cutters, but coarse cutters with a Weldon flat are hard to find.

Pics don't work, so back to the "new" site.

[henry42]

You just discovered carbide? Where have you been hiding?

Joking aside, while carbide has its uses so does HSS, so use don't be throwing any away.

But I forget whom I'm talking to. Throw something away, rofl.

[Oscar]

Pics work fine if you have a proper linking account somewhere.

[idacal]

I like the carbides in the bigger sizes but I can't spin a 3/8 hss at the proper rpm much less something smaller I just got an 1.25 insert cutter that takes the aptk inserts and I like using that, if Im cutting deep then I can clean the sides up with a hss cutter, but I'm not dulling the bottom .25 of a 2" cut face.Carbide seems to run okay dry but hss not so much. I can have a vacuum sitting there sucking the chips as they come off if Im running dry but I only have 450 rpm available
wohoo the edit button works

[farmersammm]

I got fed up with the picture thing, and probably will do it on another day. Tips, and tricks, for running carbide on old style manual machines. Low rpm solutions.

[lotechman]

I have some HSS around but have gone completely over to solid carbide endmills. Yes they can run faster and take more heat. After trying coolant which is messy on a manual mill and mist is worse I discovered that I could easily run 200 fpm on my carbides all day long if I shot a stream of air at the endmill. It clears the chips away to prevent double cutting and cools without leaving a mess.
Most of my endmill work is slotting and keyways.