Who makes the best Indexable endmill/facemill with a CBN insert for hard milling?

I’ve got some hardened D2 steel parts that need to be as nice as I can possibly make them. This is part of an assembly and I can’t send it out for grinding.

The part is similar to a collet, where I need to face the top and profile the outside (it’s not round so it can’t be done in a lathe). The flatness of the top needs to be as good as possible, and the profile of the outside needs to be fricking tight. No hard tolerances, just as good as possible.

I remember when I toured the haas factory a couple years ago they were using a flymill with a single cbn insert to mill surfaces flat within a Few tenths. So my original thought was to copy that with a sandvik cbn facemill to make the flat and then use a nice endmill to profile the outside.

But.... i would really like to use a single indexable endmill with a
single cbn insert to both profile and make the flat with one tool. Anybody done anything similar or can recommend any tools that fit the bill? I’m a newbie to tool steel so I may be way off base, if so let me know any other ideas (my generation thinks “billet aerospace aluminum” is the secret sauce to every damn part, so its rare I do anything else).

Part is around 2” in diameter, so I won’t be facing much. The profiling around the outside is only .1” deep.

Look at Sandvik Century facemills

Mtndew said:

Look at Sandvik Century facemills

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Even for profiling? I thought that was a non starter

Adams said:

Even for profiling? I thought that was a non starter

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Oops, I assumed you just wanted a facemill.
Those are not for profiling

I am tempted to get the 50mm Century with the pack of the CBN inserts and see how it handles. The profiling depth is tiny.

But those dudes are almost 1 grand, bit of a pricy experiment.

Mapal or IT.TE.DE (Ingersoll) can do that, but not sure they would have something in stock.

Sandvik have a few other CBN options besides the Century.

R490 for example is a shoulder milling insert, and is available in CBN as 490R-140408E CB50, with a 2mm edge length for shallow profiling. Body and inserts all cheaper than the century also.

Face-mill tooling is going to be expensive. CBN milling inserts are usually high-CBN content grades (which are tougher and do better in interrupted cutting as seen in milling) - which means solid CBN inserts at $2-300 a piece.

You could go with ceramic, but the cost of a facemill still won't be cheap.


For a part that size, just find a good endmill with a large corner radius, and use it for the facing as well.

gregormarwick said:

Sandvik have a few other CBN options besides the Century.

R490 for example is a shoulder milling insert, and is available in CBN as 490R-140408E CB50, with a 2mm edge length for shallow profiling. Body and inserts all cheaper than the century also.

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Dude that is perfect, you are the man. The Coromill 490 is just what I need.