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Why Are Threadmills So Costly? / Where to buy them?

Halcohead

Stainless
Joined
Apr 10, 2005
Location
Bay Area, Ca
Silly question, but why are thread mills so expensive? Even single form thread mills seem to be significantly more expensive than their equivalent tap size or carbide endmill size. Is it a matter of markup, lack of demand, or is it just that nobody makes a low/mid-performance threadmill and my sense of cost has been distorted by relatively inexpensive taps and endmills? Is a threadmill any more difficult or costly to grind than a spiral point tap or vari-flute endmill?

Related question, does anyone have a good source for threadmills ranging from 80-pitch to 16-pitch (as well as single-form threadmills for odd threads)? Application is short-run prototyping, materials are primarily aluminum, 17-4ph H900, 304, 316, and 6Al-4V ti.

(They may not make perfect threadforms, but on rush prototype jobs in aluminum, I've ground single-flute single form threadmills out of old taps with acceptable results. Still, not an ideal solution for obvious reasons.)
 
More costly to make I guess. You said the pitch but what diameter thread? We've been using these guys for inserted style thread mills and they work very nice and to a certain degree change the insert to your particular pitch and thread style needs. I cannot tell you about their solid carbide thread mills as we haven't used them yet.

Single & Multi Flute Replaceable Insert Thread Mills, Thread Mill Inserts, Solid Carbide Thread Mills: Advent Tool & Manufacturing: Lake Bluff, IL

X2. I mill UN, Acme, NPT, and external splines all with 1 cutter body making it pretty economical. It holds 3 inserts but you can slow down and get away with one if needed.
 
Thanks for the direction guys. I was referring to solid carbide internal threadmills, but those look like some pretty neat inserted threadmills, something I hadn't thought of. It looks like Lakeshore Carbide and Maritool are some of the best vendors for solid carbide threadmills, so I'll be buying from them.

My primary use for threadmilling is generating oddball threads for quick-turn prototypes, so single-pitch threadmills are particularly helpful for this, since I can use them in lieu of a specialty tap (good luck finding a spiral flute 3/8-32 left handed tap, for example). It's nice to see Lakeshore has these cutters in their lineup.

I still don't understand why these cutters are so much more costly than similar sized endmills, but maybe it's just as simple as relative lack of demand.
 
Lack of demand and cost of production, especially grinding those thread forms. There really aren't too many applications where one needs to form grind threads in carbide, and every pitch needs a different wheel.
 
If you compare a full carbide tap to a similar sized carbide threadmill, the price no longer is completely off.

Don't compare HSS taps to carbide thread mills.


Nick
 








 
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