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Who really makes your carbide endmills???

jason2448

Plastic
Joined
May 18, 2015
There has been a lot of suspicion over my years of being in this industry on who actually manufacturers carbide endmills. My company has purchased many different brands and has noticed a lot of similarities in companies who claim they manufacture end mills but really don't. For example, who actually manufactures Accupro? Do you know? I Guess I'm just trying to figure out who the true manufactures are of carbide endmills. Preferably made in the USA

Thank you, Jay2448
 
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Accupro is a catch-all house brand for MSC. You'll find everything from v-flange holders to end mills under that name. I know who makes most of the Accupro end mills but it would be unfair to the mfg'r to say because they prefer to remain anonymous. You are correct, some brands don't actually make product and some are in collusion with other brands but I don't know of anyone selling Chinese tools marketed as made in the US. That would be a death sentence for a brand and I don't know anyone foolish enough to sink the time and money into a brand to risk it.

Who cares anyway? If you like what you are using and consider it a fair value for the speed and tool life you get what does it matter?

If you think the end mill industry is all shadows and secrets you should take a hard look at the V-flange tool holder market!
 
It should be noted that whoever the manufacturer is, the tungsten carbide probably came from China.

Yes it's true, over 80% of the APT comes from China now. Before the 1980's it came from various suppliers around the world but during the 80's China flooded the market and drove the price down, thus causing many suppliers to shut down. This happened again recently and the Cantung and Mactung Mining operations in Canada bankrupted. Tungsten being a strategic material, the Canadian gov't threw in the towel and bought the damn thing.

So yeah. Most of the powder now comes from China but quite a bit of carbide still gets pressed in the US.
 
Only one thing matters. Does it work for you.
Is a made in China endmill using the same machines and processes as one made in Ohio better, worse or the same?
My guess would put the number of US carbide endmill (round tool) makers at around 100-500 depending on what you consider a "manufacture".
At least 10 within 80 miles of me.
Few that a small user would even know of as no one wants to make 1/4 inch 4 flute standard endmills or sell 1-5 at a time.
Posted here often is our great member at AB Tools Inc - Manufacturing High Performance Rotary Cutting Tools since 1977 along with a video of making a straight on endmill. on the big buck machines he has invested in.
Along with a note that he does not do this "standard" and low buck work.

Are you talking making the actual carbide rod? Now your number is very close to zero. Endmill places/sources do not do this step and have never in history done it.
Bob
 
Hey Bob,
Stellram (Firth Sterling) used to make a lot of insert blanks and rod. Are they still a player?
I know Kennametal bought them a few years ago so just wondering if they still sell to the fabricators.
Ultra-Met as well.
 
Hi Bob,
On a related note, where do you think particle size is going? Is there still benefits from smaller and smaller powder, or will a threshold be reached where there's no further improvement in properties?
 
This is why I try and stick to just HSS tools, so much less drama, and the drop in performance is an added bonus.
 
Hi Bob,
On a related note, where do you think particle size is going? Is there still benefits from smaller and smaller powder, or will a threshold be reached where there's no further improvement in properties?

Regarding this I saw a study done in which a micro-grain carbide provides a more durable solid carbide mill than a sub-micro-grain for milling in aluminum, and yet no one is actually making such an end mill yet (as far as I can tell anyway). Just a curious thought, and wondering if Bob or anyone else could shed some light on that issue. I'll see if I can find the study/article again.
 
I'm sure there are plenty of places that supply end mills under several different brands. And I'm sure at some it works like this too....

Company A is a high volume end mill maker. They have contracts with 'Big Name 1, 2 and 3' to produce end mills to a very strict tolerance and quality for each of "Big Name 1, 2 and 3" (different specs for each Big Name). However, you always have manufacturing variances and produce end mills that do not meet the specification in one way or another for a given customer.

A batch is ground half a millionth out of spec or an angle is out by 0.1°. You can't put carbide back on it and fix it.......what do you do with it?......certainly you do not want to just send it to the recycler as scrap. You don't... you sell it on the "secondary" market. It's still a perfectly good end mill that will cut a lot of metal. Nothing really wrong with it at all, just doesn't meet a very strict customer spec (and command the premium price of the in-spec product). This is reflected in the pricing structure. It also explains why you get one batch from a "lower cost supplier" that run great in a given application and the next batch might not be as great.
 
This is why I care.

The problem with house brands (end mills, hardware - even groceries) is there is usually little investment in the long term brand. If you buy your end mills from Joe Smith and Sons End Mill Company, that's what they do. Their name is on the door. If their end mill business goes in the shitter, so do they. Now take a house brand in a big box store like MSC. It says Accupro. Today the low bidder to supply them was Cha-Ching company. Even if I buy a couple and like them, when I reorder them tomorrow, it could be Ding-Dong, or Slavichevs Fly By Night - I don't know, and I don't know if it will be anything like the ones I ordered last week. With Joe Smith, it was either made by Joe or his son. Further, let's suppose MSC delivers a bad batch of Accupro that everyone hates, it kills people and then gives them cancer. Does MSC fold? No, they just introduce a new brand, ApproxHobby. Slight short term impact to their cash flow. At MSC, it doesn't say Accupro on the door, it says MSC. If Joe delivers a bad batch, he better make good real quick or he is finished in the business.

Same thing is true of Home Depot and their stupid house brands, or our local grocery and theirs. I prefer a product from a supplier with their name on the door, who lives and dies by the quality of that product. Or at least one with a lot of investment in the brand and something to lose if they get it wrong.
 
Interesting thread. As far as the carbide rod goes, I know that two big players are Ceratizit, and Sandvik hard materials - not the same Sankdvik Coromant that us metal-workers are used to seeing. (Both subsidiaries of the Swedish/global conglomerate Sandvik AB)

I've been using a lot of Niagara stuff here lately and have been pretty pleased with it. Good to know that they're made from Sandvik rod, and produced in Reynoldsville, Pa.
 
Jason2448, why not share who you know is practicing this since you did bring it up?

Yes, inquiring minds want to know!

As to the Accupro (since that was mentioned several times) brand, I have been using them for about a year now exclusively. I have no complaints with their 3 flute ZrN coated carbide for aluminum.
 
but I don't know of anyone selling Chinese tools marketed as made in the US. That would be a death sentence for a brand and I don't know anyone foolish enough to sink the time and money into a brand to risk it.
.
most Dewalt power tools are made in China and usually say it right on the box, always amazes me people still pay top dollar for Dewalt tools
.
i know some HSS end mills come from South Africa. Tungsten is maybe one of the blood diamond minerals where USA requires proving it was not mined with slave labor ??
.
not sure the exact law other than paperwork has to show where tungsten and cobalt came from
 
Regarding this I saw a study done in which a micro-grain carbide provides a more durable solid carbide mill than a sub-micro-grain for milling in aluminum, and yet no one is actually making such an end mill yet (as far as I can tell anyway). Just a curious thought, and wondering if Bob or anyone else could shed some light on that issue. I'll see if I can find the study/article again.

The process improvements was in the pre-sintering or sintering of the carbide. Hot isostatic pressing, or, molding is the use of compressed liquid and high heat that presses all surfaces with "exactly" the same amount of pressure. The heat is high temp and the psi is also very high. The heat causes particle expansion that bonds the particles to each other while under pressure and cool down reinforces those bonds while the material contracts in size. Whether the process goes on to complete sintering I'm not sure.

Anyway the thing is to minimize porosity on a microscopic level.

So a HIP solid carbide endmill is probably the most stable in terms of granular structure. The drawback on Hot Isostatic Pressing is that it requires much expendable or perishable tooling (or fixturing). Of course I can imagine that only the blanks are processed in this manner and then sent to The Grinders to do their thing.:cheers:

BTW with the use of carbon fiber matrix material there is a shift in focus of the cutting tool industry or I should say there is a wider scope of needs to be met.
 
This is why I buy Destiny endmills exclusively. I can drive 20 minutes and walk into and see the tools being made and support the family business behind it. The family that runs Destiny is great and I'll give them my money over other brands in a heart beat. Been in the shop many times and have nothing but good things to say about the company and the tools.
 
Accupro is not a manufacture like Swarf said. You will never know where the carbide comes from and you will never know who makes the grind on the end mill. Another company that does this is Titan but instead of selling them direct to the customer they private label them to other companies. These other companies then portray themselves as the manufactures. Weird. Some people say there are so many USA brands out there but there are a lot fewer real manufactures then you think. Most people don't care about this but there are a few that do. The few that do care, do your research on the current end mills you buy.

Besides Accupro (who really buys cutting tools from MSC), who purchases cutting tools and rebrands them, especially Titan products? You're spewing a lot of claims with very little to back them up. You act like you know who of the American tool grinders actually grind their own tools and who doesn't but you're not very forthcoming with the info. Are you afraid of a libel lawsuit? Just trying to cause mass hysteria? An argument that contains "A lot of them do" is laughable in any situation.
 
Hey how come nobody mentions Hertel? Aren't they a brand of Kennametal? I would like them more if they made more 37 degree helix flute emills.

Didn't Hertel come about to sell tools and stuff in Europe and Asia? Anyway I like that brand as a low end type.
 








 
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