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Recommendation for facemill

cuttergrinder

Hot Rolled
Joined
Mar 16, 2007
Location
Salem,Ohio
We have a couple square cutting sandvic facemills at work. They take R290-12T308M-PM inserts. They cut very well but the inserts are very expensive. Does anyone know of any other cutters that would cut as well but take more reasonably priced inserts. I believe we are paying about 14.00 each for these inserts.
 
We have a couple square cutting sandvic facemills at work. They take R290-12T308M-PM inserts. They cut very well but the inserts are very expensive. Does anyone know of any other cutters that would cut as well but take more reasonably priced inserts. I believe we are paying about 14.00 each for these inserts.

Uhh, $14 is actually pretty cheap
 
Are you buying these in insert boxes or real quantities of say 500-1000 inserts per order?
The price changes.

I don't buy them myself but I think they about 100 at a time. The boss wants us to run cutters that take tnmg 432 inserts because the inserts are cheaper and we use them a little but they don't cut a true square corner. They also don't cut near as nice as the sandvic cutters.
 
Talk to an Iscar rep, we have a bunch of their facemills that use the two opposite sides of the standard APKT insert that we would otherwise toss out. It works great, and inserts are "free".
 
I don't buy them myself but I think they about 100 at a time. The boss wants us to run cutters that take tnmg 432 inserts because the inserts are cheaper and we use them a little but they don't cut a true square corner. They also don't cut near as nice as the sandvic cutters.

Wait.... WHAT? Even though your R290 is old school going to a TNMG??? face mill will just give you grief. I have two R290's that no longer get used for the reason you stated... Price of inserts. If you need a true 90 deg shoulder mill I have not found better than the Mitsubishi Mitsubishi Materials Web Catalogue|Products|Face Cutter|ASX400 . Honestly the SOMT inserts you can only get from them because of the recess at the back of them, but it kicks butt. I have a 50mm shell mill and a 40mm one that screws on to extensions. The reputability on walls is fantastic http://www.mitsubishicarbide.com/application/files/2714/4488/9680/b023g.pdf
 
I would second the recommendation for Iscar mills. I have used a few square insert mills at my workplace and they perform very well with the right cutting data. The inserts also last a long time, well, depending on the material. Reasonably priced afaik. Have two 25mm face mills that I love.

Or if you just wanna troll your boss you could always ask for something from Alesa... :D
 
We had some inserts the we would send out to have them ground. Yes that depends on how much over hang you have, and how badly you wear them out..Yes re-coated some also..But with a square you can usually only grind two side with losing to much size.
We even had insert ground down to the next IC to then go into another cutter body...
 
There's a few of them that I've used that are probably cheaper per edge than what you're using now. Ingersoll Gold Trio comes to mind, Iscar H690, Seco Square Six.

If you're doing a lot of the same parts, like material, like set-ups, square six will outperform (and also likely be cheaper per edge) the other two in my opinion. Two downfalls though: 1). It doesn't like ramping. 2). The inserts are ground so they must be matched up - so corners 1-3 on each side need to be indexed to match all the flutes. I mean, you can get a killer finish with it, but if the machinists/operators are scatterbrained that can go sideways on you quick.

Seco doesn't run a lot of promos with deep discounts like the other companies though. Iscar might throw some free stuff at you, even Ingersoll with a good rep might do the same. I've seen that there's rarely a cheap way to get into Seco milling tools, but when you do get into them they're worth it.

Someone else mentioned Mitsubishi. Can't say enough good about this company, assuming you'd get a good rep. Great technical support, super affordable to get into their tooling, and really good to work with if something unfortunate happens with their tool when you're using it.

Either way make sure you call up some reps and test them out before you buy anything...see what kind of deals you can get and get an idea of how the support is in your area. Some of the tool guys don't know shit about what they're selling.
 
We have a couple tool reps that come in but every one thinks their tools are best. That's why I wanted some input from you guys. The tool guy the other day recommended a cutter that used trigon inserts. I have never run them but the inserts seemed very reasonable. This tool guy doesn't seem to knowledgable. We have one cutter that we got from another tool guy. Its made by Kyocera. It takes 5 sided inserts that you can also flip over. That thing kicks ass but its not square cutting. We run it on a 5" G&L boring mill and you can run it on the highest feed it has. It will push the hp limits of the machine though. THe inserts last forever.
 
We have a couple square cutting sandvic facemills at work. They take R290-12T308M-PM inserts. They cut very well but the inserts are very expensive. Does anyone know of any other cutters that would cut as well but take more reasonably priced inserts. I believe we are paying about 14.00 each for these inserts.

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the bigger and thicker the insert the more it costs but it can usually take more and cut a lot more faster. often 200% or more faster. ipt feed some bigger inserts can take .010 to .020" ipt where little inserts might be limited to .006" ipt
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some use inserts with more edges. 4 sides or some you can flip and use 8 sides.
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often a slight feed and speed and depth and width of cut change can increase tool life 200 to 400%, something to be said with going 10% slower but tool lasting over 200 minutes as opposed to going 10% faster and 45 minute tool life. like saving 5 minutes going faster but spending 5 minutes changing inserts plus cost of inserts is actually costing more not worth going faster. and of course if sudden tool failure happens (pushing the limits) and you damage a $1000. facemill then trying to save 5 minutes is costing a lot more than expected. even 1% failure rate can be very expensive at the end of the year.
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its like driving a car at 80 mph and crashing on the curves. obviously you can drive for hours at 80 mph but if you crash the car even 1% of the time the lost time and expensive repairing the car add up considerably.
 
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the bigger and thicker the insert the more it costs but it can usually take more and cut a lot more faster. often 200% or more faster. ipt feed some bigger inserts can take .010 to .020" ipt where little inserts might be limited to .006" ipt
.
some use inserts with more edges. 4 sides or some you can flip and use 8 sides.
.
often a slight feed and speed and depth and width of cut change can increase tool life 200 to 400%, something to be said with going 10% slower but tool lasting over 200 minutes as opposed to going 10% faster and 45 minute tool life. like saving 5 minutes going faster but spending 5 minutes changing inserts plus cost of inserts is actually costing more not worth going faster. and of course if sudden tool failure happens (pushing the limits) and you damage a $1000. facemill then trying to save 5 minutes is costing a lot more than expected. even 1% failure rate can be very expensive at the end of the year.
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its like driving a car at 80 mph and crashing on the curves. obviously you can drive for hours at 80 mph but if you crash the car even 1% of the time the lost time and expensive repairing the car add up considerably.

I quickly put your values in my excel spreadsheet and I concur
 
The first shop I worked at was full of guys who bragged about how fast they were at running their tools. They had to swap their inserts every third run. That's fast, right?

Total morons.

My initial thought about 90' inserts is to use them as little as you can. Also seconding the stuff about Seco above, it's hard to beat the finish of a Seco fine cut face mill.
 
How about korloy the bodies are free and the inserts are 7.00 each
If you buy 1 box per tooth of cutter body
Don


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
It may be pretty cheap but my boss doesn't think so. Lol

The term "false economy" is meaningless to him. He won't be happy until he's getting them for free.

Cost per cutting edge and cost per insert don't matter out of context. What matters is cost per minute of cutting time in a semi-optimized toolpath: enough MRR to be productive, not too much MRR to be unreliable.

The R290 is an older cutter and there are gains to be had. Bench mark tool life numbers need to be determined using your current R290. From there, it's up to the tool reps to offer some sort of guaranteed test products where you can improve on those numbers.
 
The term "false economy" is meaningless to him. He won't be happy until he's getting them for free.

Cost per cutting edge and cost per insert don't matter out of context. What matters is cost per minute of cutting time in a semi-optimized toolpath: enough MRR to be productive, not too much MRR to be unreliable.

The R290 is an older cutter and there are gains to be had. Bench mark tool life numbers need to be determined using your current R290. From there, it's up to the tool reps to offer some sort of guaranteed test products where you can improve on those numbers.

Man, I have been using that term "false economy" A LOT lately.
 
The term "false economy" is meaningless to him. He won't be happy until he's getting them for free.

Cost per cutting edge and cost per insert don't matter out of context. What matters is cost per minute of cutting time in a semi-optimized toolpath: enough MRR to be productive, not too much MRR to be unreliable.

The R290 is an older cutter and there are gains to be had. Bench mark tool life numbers need to be determined using your current R290. From there, it's up to the tool reps to offer some sort of guaranteed test products where you can improve on those numbers.

These are the bingo statements here. Having been in your shoes, and now in the shoes of (but not the role of) a tool salesman I can tell you sooooo so many people fall in the category of shopping by price only. Plain and simple they don't understand or aren't interested in the total picture. Certain personalities are simple minded and can only see one piece of the puzzle at a time, they can't and will not without someone finding the right way to make it one puzzle piece in their mind. I have worked for people this way, and I have worked with customers that are this way.

At the end of the day it comes down to one number. Cost per unit produced. If you can break it down to that number, you are going to get the bosses attention. At the end of the month, you need to point him to the amount of dollars he spends complete that operation, not the number of inserts or how much he spent on each one.

Generally speaking, when doing the cost per unit calculation, I only take into account the cost of the insert and how many parts it can produce. If and only if, the machine has capacity constraints, and those can be eliminated, resulting in either less overtime, or less shifts per week, and you can use that labor elsewhere, do you then take into account a "burden" rate or productivity improvements to add into the savings. Or if a combination of improvements can result in that machine being used on another project. Job shops typically will see benefit from productivity improvements, as long as they aren't in a volume production situation with dedicated machines. Production shops, such as automotive shops, have enough machines to meet original planned volumes with the initial process that was laid out. It usually takes a number of improvements before you can start to eliminate shifts or production days, this sometimes takes years of work and development. The main productivity gains here are when you can decrease the frequency of a tool change, resulting in longer machine up time.
 








 
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