Biggest End Mill you've seen?

[Maglin]

Well yesterday I made it out to the Spirit/Boeing Surplus center to see what I could find and OMG is all I could say. They had 2"x12" roughing end mills that where brand new in the sleeve for $2.50 / lb. I think I saw a 4"x20" endmill their as well. Biggest tooling I've ever seen. I picked up 120 lbs. of 2024 Aluminum for $1.75 / lbs. I was like OMG I have to come here every other week and give them my paycheck. LoL. I got about 20 different NEW gang reamers and 40 New drill bits, 15 single flute end mills (for routers but I can see some uses for them) all for under $10. Everything is made is the USA and quality HSS with some carbide. The carbide stuff is $5/lb but man I was just amazed at how much new stuff they sell by the pound.

Then I went to an old tool supply and they had over 40 years of surplus purchases in their inventory. 1/2" 2 flute end mills for $3.00 ea. That is old USA made HSS for less then a Chinese cutter. Lots more than just end mills. Tons and tons of drill bits. Some so big that no one would ever buy them so they sell them to scrap companys. The guy their sold Boeing a 100x30 ft gantry router with a vacuum bed and 30,000 rpm spindle. He said it cut at 2,000 IPM and some one over rided the limits and crashed it at full speed. Took a 6 ft pipe wrench to break the nut out of the end of the frame and screw. They also have so many Jacobs chucks they can about give them away with every purchase.

Purpose of this post is just check in your back yard and maybe you can find an aircraft or major manufacturing company surplus center to get stock and tooling from. Being that 2024 is almost as strong as 7075 and over 2x stronger than 6061 I feel Like I'm stealing it at the price I'm getting it for. OMG SS sheets for $1.50/lb. Like seriously over $300 worth of SS 16 gage for maybe $10 if that. I have to go with my truck next time so I can get more material.

[MrWild]

Where is this place?

[Maglin]

A few pics of what I bought. My phone died before I got their so I'll have to snap some photo's next week when I go.

I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to cut this large piece of aluminum still. If I pay someone to do it I'll spend more for the cutting than I did on the aluminum. Might have to go vertical and cut it to manageable pieces which is scary to do.

[Maglin]

It's Wichita Kansas. I guess it used to be a really nice selection years ago before Spirit took over. They had some nice Kenmetal Lathe tooling and CAT 40 and CAT 50 tool holders also by the pound, but some of them looked fairly abused. At least I think that is what they where. They where pretty large. I'll post up some of the stuff next week.

They are messed up on pricing for some things. An older NAS cabinet with PSU's and NICs was only $100. One PSU from it is worth almost $800 and the NIC's well over that. Next to it an old desk I wouldn't give $30 for they wanted $200. Some old broken Sterret Last Word DTI's they wanted $30-50 for. A 24 or 36" Mitutouyo Height gauge that was very abused they wanted $80 for. It was broken well beyond repair IMO.

But I did manage to find some hydralic actuator's that I might be able to pick up for maybe $10 ea. for my Band saw. The one I made is ok but I don't like it so I want something better and if it works on an airplane to move flight surfaces it would work for my band saw.

[Fastest1]

Good Find! I roam thru a metal recycler yard near me all of the time. It is amazing what people throw away. Same thing, pound weight usually.

[Kevin Taylor]

Is that the place If so I buy over the phonefrom them real nice people I'm afrad If I went in person I wouldn't have enough truck or money to get out of the place . My local scrap yard is great for short drop's of steel tubing and bar I always need short length's of round solid and If I hade the money to tie up who want's to handel a 20' stick of 3" 1018 round Great find post a name and address I Think that is the rule LOL Kevin

[Maglin]

LoL. Actually "The Yard Store" goes to Spirit Surplus and gets a lot of their stuff from them. They have been pissing people off here for decades, or so I'm told. They get first dibs and take a lot of the good (new) stuff people want before anyone else gets a chance to look at it. I don't have the address handy but you can google Spirit Surplus Wichita and find it. It's how I found it. I'm going again this Wednesday and getting some .5" sheet 2024 Aluminum and whatever else I can afford. The other place is called "Mires Tool" that has a lot of Boeing Surplus stock dateing back decades, so the selection is second to none. Lots of 2 flute 1/2" endmills, drill bits from super small to over 3" in diam. Tons of aircraft fasteners and taps. I plan to get a lot of SHCH's and other fasteners and taper and bottom taps and drills to go along with them. Most all the end mills are USA HSS so a lot of people pass them by. I plan to go pick up about 20-40 end mills cause they are so cheap. Their is also a Mires Machine Comapany "MMC" that is right next door and they are their machining part of the buisness with a lot of CNC machinery. It was hard for me to find Mires Tool at first but I got them and will be doing a lot of buisness with them.

I just wish I had more money to get more stock. Their is a few pieces of SS I would love to get but it's like a #300 piece so I can't even carry it. I'll definitely post some pics of the stuff this time around. If that NAS cabinet is still their I think I'm going to buy it. Would make a super CNC electronics cabinet and the power supplies will more than pay for the cabinet. Oh and they also have large rolls of heatshrink for like $10 each. Some of it is 3" in diam and would rock to run your wiring through and kept it protected from swarf and coolant and just make a clean wire management solution. I'm going to take my truck this next time so I can get more. Just the over #100 of aluminum was a bit much for the Fusion that I took last time.

[rewster]

2024 is almost as strong as 7075 and over 2x stronger than 6061

what temper 2024 did you pick up? the 7075 i use is only 80% stronger than 6061, which I pay 2$/lb for. if I found a supplier of decent 2024 for under that price i'd be all over it all day long. heck, you could make a couple extra bucks shipping 2024 at a markup to folks like me who can't source it locally.

[Maglin]

All the 2024 is 2024 T851 which I believe has a tensile strength of 62,000 psi and I also got a 2.004" round bar of 7075-T73511. All of this was made by Kaiser. The round bar says it's made in Tennalum Jacksonville TN.

I definitely want more of this round bar to make some suspension components for my 2 cars.

Their is some fairly large sheets of .5", 1.25", and 1.5" 2024. My biggest problem is it's to large for my band saw. I would have to cut it vertically and probably take over 10 minutes to cut and these pieces are 40-120 lbs each so it's not light. I'd be willing to ship some off for some people. Use the USPS flat rate. But I would have to add something for the saw time and my time which I think would make it not worth it. It would be cheaper than the almost $10/lbs that online metals charges for this stuff but wouldn't be able to get near the dimensions you might want. I wish I would have gotten the larger band saw now. Think I'm going to once I have the money to. Would be able to handle those large pieces of stock and cut to the sizes I need to make manageable.

edit: one a side not I read that 2024 has a low machinability rating. Well I did some flycutting on some with a carbide lathe tool reformed with a fairly large cutting radius on the Bridgeport. The surface finish was nice considering I don't have it tramed in yet. I had a .006" stepover between passes so it's .003" out of tram on the Y and by guess .001" on the X. Either way I thought it cut nicely and had a very almost mirror finish on it. I was feeding at 4 IPM with a spindle speed of around 4,000 RPM. Not really knowing what I'm doing. My VFD effects both the spindle speed and power feed speed so slowing it down on the VFD made no difference in finish.

[Maglin]

Went back today. Not much changed. They had some 1.25" nylon mesh wire wrap that I got 150 ft of and I also got some .75" shrink wrap. Their is 200 ft of shrink wrap. I should be able to run most of the encoder wiring in it. I'll have the motor wires in it's own and try to squeze both into the nylon wrap. I did take some pics of a few cutters. These ones are $5 /lb. for all the cutters.