Must have lathe tooling?

In process of planning tooling up my first lathe and talking to the major brands (km, iscar etc) about what they have to offer.
Id like to setup stations or tools in a way that reduces the need to change tools between jobs. E.g. twin facing holder, or simple ability to swap inserts between materials.

Any must have tools to look into or that provides a quality of life improvement? Aluminum is 99% of what we cut.

Thanks!

Depends how many tool positions you have but if you're mainly doing alu I'd start off with a holder for DCMT/DCGT inserts for roughing and one for VCMT/VCGT inserts for finishing, they would cover most of your facing and OD turning needs straight away.

I'd also look at some Ceratizit EcoCut drills, I personally don't like them that much for OD turning but love them for drilling and boring. Other manufacturers are available, Korloy are probably the best value but a more limited range, I do like their ground and polished inserts for non ferrous though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_H2nVFibE8

I just got some Korloy CCGT, DCGT and VCGT DLC coated inserts to try too, if the claims of longer edge life are true they may be worth a look at.

we mostly use iscar wnmg for od/id roughing with kennametal/iscar holders. negative rake but with a positive curl to break the chip in stainless steel. typically use no 2 radius for roughing and sometimes no 3 radius. 90 percent of what we work with is 316 stainless. for aluminum though you want tools with positive rake and high shear.

sometimes we use dnmg inserts on the cnc lathe. sometimes we use cnmg inserts on the manual lathe

For finishing, we typically use tcmt inserts for both od and id work. no 1 radius. positive rake. we like the sandvik boring bars

stick to iscar for grooving. they have the best grooving product line imo. we really like the pentacut and the logiq f-grip holder

We have found, in general, that iscar offers the most bang for the buck for lathe tooling. mileage may vary

my .02 cents.

a lot of ways to skin this catfish

always what you happened to think you didn't need

Do yourself a favor and buy 2-5 PCD finishing inserts. DNMG or VNMG with a small nose radius. They will get you incredible tool life, mirror finishes, and they help a lot with holding tighter tolerances as they don't really wear so there isn't much offset required on the insert side.

You don't say if you got a bar feed or not, but if not, this bar puller is really nice.
Accudyne – Our Products, Your Solutions.

Buy basic insert geometries, that way you can use different brands in the same holder. If it is a proprietary clamping system for the insert, you will be stuck with that brand.