Kaleb
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2010
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My experience with carbide tooling has been up and down since I first got a lathe of my own, but I reckon some stuff made by Tungaloy that I've just got lately is excellently suited to us hobbyists. Tungaloy makes quite a lot of different G and E-tolerance inserts, which are much sharper than your regular M- tolerance inserts. (For those of you that aren't that familiar with carbide the tolerance is specified by the third letter in the code of the insert.) They also have a few grades and chip breakers specially designed for small lathes and small parts. Anyway, it's about time I showed you the results of some test cutting. All of these parts are mild steel of some description, the lathe used was my 9" Hercus. Spindle speed was about 750rpm, and the feed was 1 1/2 thou per rev longitudinal. Facing was mostly hand fed.
This part was bored and faced with the insert and tool shown here. I got a couple of these inserts from a local supplier called Sawcare. I'll put a link to their website in at the end of this post. The rake on these is strongly positive, at 30 degrees. I ordered the smallest nose radius I could get, and the grade (J740) is specifically intended for small lathes. The high tolerance, sharp edge and high rake cut extremely cleanly and make it easy to get a really good finish. It doesn't show up too well here though.
I used this insert to finish all over this part. It's a cermet insert, which can be very easy to chip, but interruptions didn't seem to trouble it with the light cuts I was taking. Cermets are known for producing nice smooth finishes, which this insert certainly did, though I think this piece of stock is something like 12L14 which finishes particularly well. However I did get nice finishes on another part which was a different type of steel. These inserts are also from Sawcare.
This part was also finished with the tool and insert in the photo. These inserts have a chip breaker specially designed for small lathes, and the grade is moderately tough. I was even able to face with the stock hanging out as much as 150mm (about 6") from the chuck without tailstock support or a steady rest, and still got a fair result. I ordered the tool from Sawcare, but the inserts came from an eBay seller in America by the name of missouri_mechanic_shop. He still has quite a few packs available at the time of writing. This tool and insert also work fairly well in the little 6x10 Sieg, which can be very chatter prone.
Here's a close-up of the inserts in the three tools. All in all, I am pleased to bits with the way these new inserts perform, especially considering I'm running them at speeds that are really quite slow for carbide. The Tungaloy website has lots more info on these inserts, as well as a whole lot of other tooling: http://www.tungaloy.co.jp/ttj/english/index.php
And here's Sawcare's website: http://www.sawcare.com.au/
This part was bored and faced with the insert and tool shown here. I got a couple of these inserts from a local supplier called Sawcare. I'll put a link to their website in at the end of this post. The rake on these is strongly positive, at 30 degrees. I ordered the smallest nose radius I could get, and the grade (J740) is specifically intended for small lathes. The high tolerance, sharp edge and high rake cut extremely cleanly and make it easy to get a really good finish. It doesn't show up too well here though.
I used this insert to finish all over this part. It's a cermet insert, which can be very easy to chip, but interruptions didn't seem to trouble it with the light cuts I was taking. Cermets are known for producing nice smooth finishes, which this insert certainly did, though I think this piece of stock is something like 12L14 which finishes particularly well. However I did get nice finishes on another part which was a different type of steel. These inserts are also from Sawcare.
This part was also finished with the tool and insert in the photo. These inserts have a chip breaker specially designed for small lathes, and the grade is moderately tough. I was even able to face with the stock hanging out as much as 150mm (about 6") from the chuck without tailstock support or a steady rest, and still got a fair result. I ordered the tool from Sawcare, but the inserts came from an eBay seller in America by the name of missouri_mechanic_shop. He still has quite a few packs available at the time of writing. This tool and insert also work fairly well in the little 6x10 Sieg, which can be very chatter prone.
Here's a close-up of the inserts in the three tools. All in all, I am pleased to bits with the way these new inserts perform, especially considering I'm running them at speeds that are really quite slow for carbide. The Tungaloy website has lots more info on these inserts, as well as a whole lot of other tooling: http://www.tungaloy.co.jp/ttj/english/index.php
And here's Sawcare's website: http://www.sawcare.com.au/
