Anyone seeing tool quality issues?

[SWYooper]

This past summer I ordered 20 groove tool inserts from a large, well-known manufacturer. I found four of them damaged out of the box, with coating flaked off and chipped carbide, on the cutting edges and elsewhere. The rep replaced them with some of his available "giveaway" fund, that was that.

Last week I received some back turn inserts from the same manufacturer, 4 of the 5 inserts had rather significant damage. I do swiss medical stuff, I've seen entire lots of parts rejected for far less than what I was seeing on these inserts. Two of them had corners chipped off on the actual body of the insert.

This Monday I received more groove tool inserts and 4 of the 5 were damaged. Not as severely as the back turns, but what was supposed to be a sharp edge was a large, uncoated radius on several of the corners. The tool rep was at my place within an hour, and these last two are going the "official" route with a complaint and RMA.

I know all about the longer lead times and worker shortage. Has anyone else seen actual tool quality dropoff? This is the first time I've seen inserts damaged out of the box from the factory, and now three times in several months and twice in about a week just seems... off.

 

[Milland]

No, but I mostly do milling ops.

It sure would be interesting to know the vendor, but I can understand your being hesitant to reveal them yet.

 

[michiganbuck]

Re: supposed to be a sharp edge was a large, uncoated radius on several of the corners. // rdered 20 groove tool inserts from a large, well-known manufacturer. I found four of them damaged

what, were these eBay bought?

 

[DDoug]

This past summer I ordered 20 groove tool inserts from a large, well-known manufacturer. I found four of them damaged out of the box, with coating flaked off and chipped carbide, on the cutting edges and elsewhere. The rep replaced them with some of his available "giveaway" fund, that was that.

Last week I received some back turn inserts from the same manufacturer, 4 of the 5 inserts had rather significant damage. I do swiss medical stuff, I've seen entire lots of parts rejected for far less than what I was seeing on these inserts. Two of them had corners chipped off on the actual body of the insert.

This Monday I received more groove tool inserts and 4 of the 5 were damaged. Not as severely as the back turns, but what was supposed to be a sharp edge was a large, uncoated radius on several of the corners. The tool rep was at my place within an hour, and these last two are going the "official" route with a complaint and RMA.

I know all about the longer lead times and worker shortage. Has anyone else seen actual tool quality dropoff? This is the first time I've seen inserts damaged out of the box from the factory, and now three times in several months and twice in about a week just seems... off.

Could it be your "tool rep" is selling counterfeit stuff ?

 

[boslab]

I never saw a sandvick insert chewed in the box, not ever, come to think nor iscar or Walter this sounds dodgy
Mark

 

[Mtndew]

The only thing I've seen is a batch of Sandvik 8mm taps where the square end wasn't ground correctly and it had issues setting correctly in a tap collet.
Our rep quickly replaced them, but they were from the same batch number.
We just used a regular ER collet and all is good.

Other than that I've not seen anything like you describe. Who's the vendor and did you but from your rep?

 

[Janderso]

Sounds like Ebay counterfeit shit

 

[SWYooper]

This isn't eBay counterfeit shit, I refuse to order tooling on that formerly awesome site.

I've had the issue with inserts ordered through the rep, as well as inserts coming from the supplier that stocks our auto-crib.

...and the rep called me while typing this message out. He just took delivery of some inserts for a customer demo and said he was seeing the same damage I did on them. It seems there is a packaging issue, where the inserts are banging into each other during their travels.

Anyone using Iscar SwissCut inserts (edit: that you've received recently), make sure you inspect every one before putting it in your machine as this could potentially be impacting the entire line.

 

[DDoug]

This isn't eBay counterfeit shit, I refuse to order tooling on that formerly awesome site.

Not you...Your rep might have been putting some "eBay counterfeit shit" in his inventory.

Why did he Doo this ?
"The rep replaced them with some of his available "giveaway" fund, that was that."

 

[SWYooper]

Not you...Your rep might have been putting some "eBay counterfeit shit" in his inventory.

Why did he Doo this ?
"The rep replaced them with some of his available "giveaway" fund, that was that."

I can only imagine because he gets a $4k/year budget for giveaways/demos for customers and wanted to take care of this quickly and get me the tools I paid for. He had some of what I needed on-hand and rather than navigate paperwork for a return, that was the solution. When it became apparent there was a problem at a later date, we went the official route.

This isn't a second-hand tool guy, it's a rep directly from the company. If it is indeed counterfeit, then both he and the supplier that stocks our auto-crib have been getting them from the same place. Not impossible I suppose, but well beyond the realm of a reasonable possibility IMO.

 

[Mtndew]

Why did he Doo this ?
"The rep replaced them with some of his available "giveaway" fund, that was that."

Probably from their "trunk stock". Our Sandvik rep has a bunch of stock for testing purposes and such.

 

[TeachMePlease]

Not you...Your rep might have been putting some "eBay counterfeit shit" in his inventory.

Why did he Doo this ?
"The rep replaced them with some of his available "giveaway" fund, that was that."

You don't get stuff from trunk stock?

 

[norb]

I was going to order some Sandvik milling inserts when I had the idea to check ebay first. I bought a lot of great tooling off ebay at some very good prices. I typed the numbers in and to my astonishment all these inserts came up for about half price. I ordered about 10 boxes. When they arrived, I installed them in the cutter and started milling. t took about two seconds to realize something was wrong. The cutter sounded like it was going to explode! I never occurred to me that someone would make counterfeit inserts, but they did.

 

[boslab]

I don’t get the banging into each other myself but maybe really sharp edge loss and not the beaver mauling I’m imagining unless they are delivered by ICBM and get 400G deceleration at the parcel depot, I now have a funny image in my head for the night, Amazon ICBM parcel service from China, hope it gets sorted
Mark