Cheap vs. Expensive Cutting Tools

[sansbury]

So, here I am looking at the Enco catalog for some random bits of tooling I could use. Taps, various types of endmills, that sort of thing.

In most cases, you have the choice of "Enco brand" for say $4, OSG or Putnam for $18, and sometimes a generic "USA brand" for $8, all for nominally the same 3-flute cobalt roughing endmill or whatever it is. Ditto with taps, drills, etc.

I'm not opposed to spending $20 for "the same tool" you could buy for $5 but I'm also not made of money so I like to spend it efficiently. I am wondering how much difference I am likely to see as a hobbyist with hobbyist machinery working with hobbyist volume and tolerances in hobbyist materials between the $20 tool and the $5 one.

[Karl_T]

You do get what you pay for. A good general rule of thumb for anything, don't get the cheapest, don't get the most expensive.

I like to have some el cheapos around for jobs where I'm likely to break one.

OTOH, I've found the quality of taps is critical to me. I only buy OSG. Break a few taps off in the finishing step of a big job an you'll agree.

Karl

[philbur]

Try these guys for decent tooling at affordable prices.

http://www.discount-tools.com/

USA/European branded is the only way to go. The low price far eastern stuff is not worth the time it takes to throw it in the bin.

Phil

Originally Posted by sansbury So, here I am looking at the Enco catalog for some random bits of tooling I could use. Taps, various types of endmills, that sort of thing. In most cases, you have the choice of "Enco brand" for say $4, OSG or Putnam for $18, and sometimes a generic "USA brand" for $8, all for nominally the same 3-flute cobalt roughing endmill or whatever it is. Ditto with taps, drills, etc. I'm not opposed to spending $20 for "the same tool" you could buy for $5 but I'm also not made of money so I like to spend it efficiently. I am wondering how much difference I am likely to see as a hobbyist with hobbyist machinery working with hobbyist volume and tolerances in hobbyist materials between the $20 tool and the $5 one.

[Stepper Monkey]

I have found that for most small mills good high-speed steel tools will do as well or outperform carbide in most cases. I find carbide to often be a waste of money for benchtop use.

Carbide tools by thier nature need to run optimally at very much faster speeds than the exact same tool in HSS, and at the lower speeds and feed rates of benchtop mills there is no real advantage to going with the more expensive carbide. Often life span isn't even much different under those conditions, in many cases a HSS can even last longer, and they are certainly sharper. Running carbide bits slow takes a lot of their normally longer life right out of them.

Anyone else have the same experiences?

[davereagan]

Great question. When I started off, I naively thought high speed steel is high speed steel, right? Just a simple formula. Wrong. There is Chinese HSS, which is probably just a carburized steel. Then there is German or Japanese Cobalt HSS, which rivals carbide in its performance. Then there is PM (powdered metal) high speed steel, which has awesome hardness without the normal sacrifice in toughness. Chinese steel is great for $50 2-4-6 blocks or $10 1-2-3 blocks. I have no interest in paying $400 for a domestic set of 2-4-6 blocks. But anything with a cutting edge should atleast be from Eastern Europe (Poland, Macedonia, Bosnia). Their taps are ok for shorter runs. I wholeheartedly agree with the earlier comment about taps. When you smoke a cheap drill, it rarely sticks in the part, but a tap usually does. I have a full set of premiuim high vanadium coated taps that only seem cheap after some painful losses. Enco's import line is generally the very cheapest Chinese stuff. Other catalog houses use better stuff, like KBC Tools. After using coated carbide for endmilling dry in steel, it's hard to go back to HSS. Basically, try some cheaper tools and you'll find which ones you need to be better and which ones you don't. Those 115 piece drill sets for $30 are a complete waste of time unless you're cutting nothing harder than aluminum. I would be happy to share more of my experience and hopefully save you some headaches. If you have some specific material/ job examples, please email me. Lastly, www.cme-tools.com has coated cobalt roughing endmills whch are the best of both worlds. They are made from Bohler German cobalt, but ground in China to save on labor. They cut well and hold up against stainless for about the price of the Enco crap.

davereagan@hotmail.com

[BobWarfield]

Buy the name brands on sale, or on eBay for about 1/2 retail.

Cheers,

BW

[sansbury]

Thanks all for the suggestions.

Bear in mind I'm a hobbyist so I am more likely to break a tool due to ham-fistedness than wear. 80% of what I do is 6061, some Delrin, a little brass, and only occasionally steel.

That said a broken tap can just about make you cry sometimes. So far I've been able to work around them but more than one of my projects has a tap embedded in it somewhere. If the work was for other people the material loss would offset the cost of the tap. I've avoided the "nice" taps because I didn't want to break them but it didn't occur to me to factor in them being less likely to break. I've also developed a taste for thread forming taps and those seem to be all domestic anyway.

Right now I seem to be getting a lot of mileage out of the 1/4" cobalt rougher I bought. It is supposed to be Bohler steel but is ground in Asia. Maybe I will splurge on a nice OSG or Putnam one since I use it so much.

As for eBay I am sick of it. I've been putting together a set of reamers. What a joke! One guy has 1/4" and 1/2" but not 3/8". One guy has .249 but you need to buy the .251 from another seller who has them only in a set of three. So two months and $50 in shipping charges later you've saved $20 versus buying them from the catalog.

I did get a small Criterion boring head for $50 from there but that was less of a "deal" and more that the 1-1/2" head seemed a better match for my mill than the cheap 2" ones you usually find. Certainly a nice tool--probably made when I Love Lucy was still showing new episodes. I have also been stalking eBay for Procunier collets since I picked up a #1 tapping head at the MIT flea market. I got the head for all of $15 but no collets. Found out why as soon as I realized a set of 4 would cost $100!

[LeeWay]

I get pretty good use out of some coated Chinese end mills that I get off Ebay. I am able to run the @ 4800 RPM with no trouble in mild steel. I have run them @ 6600. I rarely wear one out before it breaks. I use the 1/8" 3 flutes and 3/16" 4 flute with 3/8" shanks in an R-8 collet.

Sometimes I get 25 parts before breakage. Other times maybe 10 or 15. I buy these for around $2 each, so when one breaks, there are no tears.

I do keep some better quality EM's on hand when I need a good finish, but at the higher speeds withe the cheaper ones, I still get pretty decent finish.

I would recommend getting some of each. Then when setting up new jobs or determining your feeds and speeds, chuck up a cheapy. Then you don't feel so bad when it gets fubared quickly. I certainly hate to snap a $20 or $30 carbide bit because I did something odd with the code.

[Stepper Monkey]

Originally Posted by LeeWay I would recommend getting some of each. Then when setting up new jobs or determining your feeds and speeds, chuck up a cheapy. Then you don't feel so bad when it gets fubared quickly. I certainly hate to snap a $20 or $30 carbide bit because I did something odd with the code.

I couldn't agree more. Especially using a lot of finer sized bits, I break WAY more tools testing new toolpaths, and then later optimizing them for speeds. Much cheaper and faster to use disposable bits sometimes on proper material stock than to test run new code with tooling block or wax first. Chinese bits are cheaper than tooling block/machining wax anyway...

[pzzamakr1980]

I agree with the sentiment of buy some of both. Because just as StepperMonkey said, a new part with a new toolpath can be a disaster. Keep in mind with the cheap Chinese tools that oftentimes a 1/4 endmill is not a 1/4 endmill. It will usually be a bit above or below. This can be a real problem when you are making close tolerance holes. Also, while carbide works best for real cnc equipment, not the hobby equipment, ebay has such an abundance of it, and oftentimes cheaper than good HSS, that I use it and its much cheaper and of course it works amazingly. Especially on aluminum. My opinion is that if you are cutting aluminum, use carbide. You can run it faster than HSS, even the good HSS stuff, and have much less worry about chip welding. If finish doesnt need to be mirror perfect, I wont even bother with coolant, and I wont have any problems.