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Beware of Chinese Counterfeit Carbide Inserts

OKIEMACHINIST

Aluminum
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Location
OKLAHOMA
What I thought was a great deal on eBay turned out to be a horrible one and wanted to forewarn anyone so they don't make the same mistake as me.

I found a listing for some Sandvik Milling inserts that was about 1/3 of their normal price. The pictures showed the box of inserts with a Sandvik Label, the seller was in China and had a lot of positive feedback, so I bought 200 of the inserts. Received them in and at I first noticed that the box just didn't seem right. The box color was different then the other Sandvik boxes we had. Also, Insert color for the coating was a little different for the 1030 grade than we are normally accustomed to. I went ahead and had a machinist try them out. He loaded up a face mill cutter and they only lasted 20 seconds in a cut before failing. He then flipped them to a new edge and had the same results. Tried 4 more inserts, same result. He brought me the box and said no way these things are the same. He had been running the same material with the same cutter with a U.S.A. purchased Sandvik inserts that were the same grade and was getting 30-40 mins of cut time.

I put in a request to eBay and hopefully I can get my money back, but just wanted to warn anyone to be careful when buying Name brand carbide from China that seem like a fantastic deal. More than likely they are counterfeit and horrible quality.
 
I have seen the chinese sellers with sandvick, mitsu, etc brand name inserts dirt cheap.

But no way I believed that they could be legit. Seriously, the country that puts anti freeze in infant formula is going to sell you brand name insert that are not made in the country they are selling from at 1/3 price? Or are made there and are not stolen/rejects?

Should add, in all fairness I bought some suspecting counterfit and poor quality. I had to baby them, made from the finest crystal. Unbelievably brittle.
 
I have not bought fakes, but have bough cheap chinese, think 10 of for MCS single insert price. Yeah quality is not the same, i won't use them on life or death and nothing too exotic, but there not all bad either, couple of boxes have been shit, but overall they have proven some what value for money. Am assuming these are all generally name brand inserts that for what ever tolerance or grade have been rejected by the big names and hence sold unbranded as seconds.

Had best luck with the polished upsharp carbide for alu, yeah again not name brand great, oftern the odd corner won't be great, but all in all very usable and well worth the savings on non demanding jobs. At circa £10 for a box of 10 SEHT there bloody good value and i have no qualms in recommending those!

Ergo if your a mixed material job shop doing odd - low qty runs they may well work for you, if you have a process dialed in to a specific grade and brand then yeah, your going to be disappointed!

Will happily recommend the cheap insert holders though, they have all proven very good so far and more than a few times near identical to name brands, like right down to the cutter swirls - tool paths and feeds that were used to make them! Run out on all the milling cutters i have had have all been as good as name brands again.
 
I to have noticed incredibly low prices on supposedly name brand inserts.

I quit eBay about 15 years ago after getting burned on two purchases. Paid for them, but nothing ever came.

Fast forward to a year ago and I see a different eBay, mostly "buy it now".

Also it appears eBay is guaranteeing your money back on fraudulent sales. Has the money back deal worked for anyone?

eBay is VERY much in favour of the buyer now. Just don't pay with anything other than PayPal.
I've had 3-4 things not show up, and eBay just credits you back to your PayPal account.
 
That is outrageous! You poor thing. Thanks for the heads up. I never would have thought someone would lie about something like this.
 
Also it appears eBay is guaranteeing your money back on fraudulent sales. Has the money back deal worked for anyone?

I order quite a lots of junk from ebay and have got 100% refund in more than dozen of cases.
Chinese sellers are usually easy(only time-consuming) to deal with, only had problems with some fucktard seller from UK that managed to fool the ebay customer support.

"Korloy" fake DCGT alu inserts with wrong chip breaker =refund
10 boxes of dirt cheap unbranded CCMT inserts, got different model from the pics =refund


Korloy seems to be most widely copied and sold brand from chinese ebay sellers. Counterfeit Mitutoyo digital calipers are also widespread.
I use the (fake) Korloy MGMN style parting inserts, sometimes they give up suprisingly easily but they are enough cheap that I don't care. Cheap enough that I don't mind parting a HRC60 tool steel hex stock. Sometimes it works and sometimes you break the insert and holder.

CCMT inserts 100pcs for 40usd :D:nutter: were some obvious quality rejects, edges are chipped all around and even the model was different from the pic. Got the refund and now I use those inserts for all the nasty scraptanium that ends up on my hobby lathe in my home workshop.
 
Has the money back deal worked for anyone?

Yeah has always worked for me with out issue probably have 2-3 problems a year and never lost out yet. Often times its just simple mix ups like wrong seal size etc. Oftern lost in transit. The savings more than offset the occasional agro and do to the feed back system, i find most ebay sellers way better to deal with than most private web stores. I buy a lot of low qty fasteners for repairs through there, generally works out really cheap compared to buying box fulls and there here in under 2 days!

You do have to go into these kinda purchases being realistic though, if stuff is super cheap like these inserts, then your not getting a genuine item and need to be realistic about that. Personally i find it best to avoid the fakes and go for the own brand - unbranded Chinese inserts, the quality is better. Can't stress enough though i would not be buying these for serious production, but for high end hobby or job-shop type use there more than usable!
 
I to have noticed incredibly low prices on supposedly name brand inserts.

I quit eBay about 15 years ago after getting burned on two purchases. Paid for them, but nothing ever came.

Fast forward to a year ago and I see a different eBay, mostly "buy it now".

Also it appears eBay is guaranteeing your money back on fraudulent sales. Has the money back deal worked for anyone?

I have used the money back guarantee before (like 5 years ago) and it was pretty painless. Just go with item received not as described. I always open a claim for any problem just so Ebay has a record. This way if need be you can elevate it and you have the proof needed to get a full refund and usually keep the item too.

On a success note: I bought a legit Haimer and a legit Interapid for less on ebay. For the Haimer I used a seller that went by patliam3d he sells legit Haimers and has OEM haimer replacement tips too. I bought the interapid from dbrelow and it was a legit interapid .0001 indicator. So there are legit sellers too.


With ebay it is hit and miss but if you do get an item that claims to be something and isn't then at a minimal thats what the claims and feedback are for.
 
These days the only time you will find a screaming deal on name brand tooling on E-bay is if it walked off in an employee's pocket and they want to get rid of it quick. I think common sense should have been applied in the OP's case. A company based in China selling high quality tooling from a European based company at 33 cents on the dollar? I am an insomniac who got hit in the head a lot in the past and I would not fall for that.
 
Some cuzz sold me a 240v-110v transformer on eBay for £10 then didn't send it. Many attempts at contacting the vendor but no replies. I opened a case with eBay and soon had a refund. The only problem here is that I would rather have had the transformer! The vendor should be made to honour the sale or be prosecuted.
 
I would be very surprised if the OP got his money back in this case. The item was delivered in the quantity purchased. Of course a trained eye and common sense tells you they are not high quality Sandviks. Ebay out sources it's customer service to call centers in the Phillipines, the chance of getting someone there to understand the issue is a big fat zero.
 
Ebay has been my go-to source for stuff I need at the shop for years. Carbide inserts, toolholders, drills, taps, mics, calipers, etc. -- with just a few mouse clicks I can search exact items, and 99% of the time I can source at less than buying through a distributor.

Even if it's "previous generation" carbide (which is only a couple or three years ago really), the carbide is still good stuff and works great when you machine like me, and make process reliability the primary goal instead of just raw, full-blast metal removal. Plus, at $3 per (good brand) CNMG432 versus $12, I can afford to index corners a bit more often.

And stuff like Allied spade drills and inserts, Mitutoyo, etc. have been great for decades!

Ebay for me is FASTER, it's EASIER, and it's CHEAPER, so it works for my small shop.

I usually don't buy stuff for the shop from Chinese sellers, although I do for my model railroad hobby. Most all model train stuff is made in China, so we have to buy from there - either direct or through American companies.

But for manufacturing-related stuff, to heck with buying from the Chinese.

ON EDIT: I do order from McMaster Carr fairly often for the stuff we all get from there!

ToolCat
 
I bought quite a variety of unbranded turning inserts from a Chinese company. They are good enough that I actually worry that I am getting hosed on buying name brand at full price (10x more). That's the issue that is difficult to reconcile, are the name brands selling at a fair price or at a 'what the market will bear' sort of price.

This was not done through Ebay, but I found the seller very easy to deal with, as they had not shipped the quantities I ordered but had charged for the full order. They refunded the difference immediately.

I have had to use the Ebay money back for a couple of lost shipments. I like it that there is no quibbling over whether it actually got shipped or wrapped up properly to survive the handling.
 
While back I cleared one of my drawers out had various un-opened boxes of tips that were expensive when I bought them thought I would off-load them at what I thought was a bargain price until I saw brand new un-opened boxes of tips being sold for less than a tenner with free post.He had sold hundreds of boxes and there was no mention of last few boxes thought by time he buys them he must be getting them for next to nothing so they had to be dubious at that price
 
But for manufacturing-related stuff, to heck with buying from the Chinese.

ToolCat

You do realise the odds are really high regardless of were you buy from at the moment the raw materials in your inserts were probably part of main land china???
 
I have not bought fakes, but have bough cheap chinese, think 10 of for MCS single insert price. Yeah quality is not the same, i won't use them on life or death and nothing too exotic, but there not all bad either, couple of boxes have been shit, but overall they have proven some what value for money. Am assuming these are all generally name brand inserts that for what ever tolerance or grade have been rejected by the big names and hence sold unbranded as seconds.

Had best luck with the polished upsharp carbide for alu, yeah again not name brand great, oftern the odd corner won't be great, but all in all very usable and well worth the savings on non demanding jobs. At circa £10 for a box of 10 SEHT there bloody good value and i have no qualms in recommending those!

Ergo if your a mixed material job shop doing odd - low qty runs they may well work for you, if you have a process dialed in to a specific grade and brand then yeah, your going to be disappointed!

Will happily recommend the cheap insert holders though, they have all proven very good so far and more than a few times near identical to name brands, like right down to the cutter swirls - tool paths and feeds that were used to make them! Run out on all the milling cutters i have had have all been as good as name brands again.


Funny I have had the opposite experience. Inserts have generally been decent but the tool holders have been wobbly shit. ?
 
Funny I have had the opposite experience. Inserts have generally been decent but the tool holders have been wobbly shit. ?

More often than not, the threads leave something to be desired: they must use the extra large thread taps required for hot dip galvanized parts, and then spec the screws that also would be undersize for hot dip galvanizing, but they don't galvanize anything so it's pretty friggin' loose :D
 
^ i don't buy the holders off ebay, thats the only shit holder i have bought, a VCMT16 holder from a uk source, labled as glacern and its crap screws in the wrong place!! But the Chinese holders, and especially the Chinese boring bars of bang good are bloody brilliant, have dozens of em, cut off in half inch increments for use in boring heads in the mill etc. Over here on monthly special offer MSC wants a £100 for 4, the same size bars are less than £5 each from bang good, credit were its due quality has proven great from them so far and at a price less than a expensive insert for em!

My experience with insert tooling is the holders very much do have a life span cheap or name brand expensive, in smaller CCMT sizes or even bigger, have a insert fail badly or have a crash and the pockets can - do get damaged, the threads wear etc, end of that holder! Thats a lot lot less painful when there not big bucks! I have more than a few £50-£90 bars, hell some even bought from J&L back then, sandvick etc, the good Chinese ones are on a par.

Don't get me wrong, the inserts i have bought off the bay from Chinese sellers generally have had me go back for more, just if i got a order in tomorrow for a thousand 316 stainless part a month repeating monthly i would still much prefer to run them - dial it into a specific insert and grade from a name brand uk source (NOT FUCKING KORROLLY THOUGH!! as thoes bastards seam to change grades way too oftern, 3 times i have got a great grade process dialled then they discontinue that insert in that flavour!!! AHHHHHHH Im not the only one they have let down like that too, Mark had them do the same to him)
 
the op bought inserts from a seller In China

mmtoolscarbide sells surplus tooling and has for many years. I bought come long length solid carbide drills from him a loong time ago. He may rep new stuff also. I dont know.

for a $6 savings i would try the made in Sweden ones.
 








 
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