The Shop > Tools
Homemade Carbide Mill
vtsteam:
Yes Don, I knew that when I milled it in the first place, of course, a universal mill.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
right.....
That's why I put relief on the end, too, backwards. Probably I'll just run it in reverse like the other one. Maybe I'll keep making them that way so I always know carbide=backwards!
btw I just realized those are some OLD inserts -- notice it says Detroit 32 Michigan -- that's the old zone code before US zip codes -- If I remember correctly that was changed about the time the Beatles first hit America. Early 60's?
Ahhh, they don't make inserts like they used to..........! :)
sparky961:
I've always been a fan of simplicity, just rarely the originator thereof. I've looked at making my own in the past, but always figured Id need to be very careful to keep at least TWO insert pockets in perfect alignment with each other. But yes, it always comes back down to single point tooling... Nice Job, despite the slightly "different" approach.... ;)
vtsteam:
--- Quote from: awemawson on August 29, 2013, 05:39:58 PM ---Looks good : looking forward to see the shot of the finished surface which I'm sure will shortly follow after the departure of the inlaws :clap:
--- End quote ---
Thanks, Andrew. Will be free tomorrow -- hope it cuts well.
I can see I'm going to have learn how to set up to sharpen my other end mills. :coffee:
Meldonmech:
I believe I read somewhere that you can normalise cast iron by heating to red and allowing it to cool slowly, to reduce surface hardness. This would probably be practical on items the size of your cross slide. Worth a try on a piece of scrap.
Cheers David
vtsteam:
Thanks David -- I read about that too and might try it some day on an important chilled part.
Hoping here that it's just a local sand dust problem in the skin rather than chilled iron. I usually grind off the skin with a hand grinder before milling , but couldn't do a good job in the slot corners this time. Hit that rough stuff with an end mill and the cutting corner is instantly dulled.
This morning:
Tried the new mill out even before coffee was ready. It did a fine job. A bit noisy as the vertical cutting edge is wide and square, not helical, and it's a single point cutter. You can't take a deep cut. But it gave excellent results for what it is. It cleaned out the skin in the sand pockets nicely. In future, a slot would be better cut as gradually descending passes, using the easy cutting horizontal edge, rather than a horizontal traverse into a vertical edge as I did here. This mill would cut faster and much more quietly in that case.
I'm thinking that if the tool were cut down in the shank you could actually make an official T slot cutter out of it. Not a fast tool then, but a low cost one -- how often do I need to cut or clean up T slots anyway?
Here is a picture of the cut. Slight scallops at my impatient (manual) rate of feed. The tool was cutting on both edges in this pass. Must build an autofeed from that windshield wiper motor some day...............
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