Originally Posted by BrendaEM  Hi,
I have a few questions about the inexpensive fly cutters in such places Enco, and Grizzly, the kind that holds lathe-style carbide tipped bits:
http://www.grizzly.com/products/g5717
I have read that very shallow cuts are the way to go, such as .001"-.002" a pass. They do not seem like a bit I would want to crash/stall.
Which bit profile would be best for use with a fly cutter? |
they look like they hold a lathe style carbide bit, but i'd disagree that that is the right tool - the front clearance on those bits is often insufficient in my experience. Those fly cutters orient the tool differently than when in a lathe, they are ground to cut in direction of the green arrow (from image in link below) not the red arrow:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28295
imo a flycutter needs to be ground for the job OR make a cutter that holds the bit vertically so the cutting edge is as was intended by the geometry. of that diy insert holder looks good.
i don't know the x3, but depth of cut with a fly cutter is determined by available torque. because there is so much leverage, they do need light cuts, but 10 or 15 thou should be doable. one advantage of carbide is that some mills won't run slow enough to use hss with the larger dia's a fly cutter provides when flycutting steel. If that isn't a constraint (or unless you are running a giant industrial machine) hss is the tooling of choice as it requires less cutting force than carbide - this allows a bigger depth of cut (plus is cheap cheap cheap and easily resharpened).