Help identifying tooling (Mostly for milling machines)

Howdy everyone,

I recently went to a machine shop liquidation sale on Long Island to look at a Powermatic bandsaw they had for sale and I ended up buying 3 vertical bandsaws, a Saeilo cnc mill, and a few tonns of tooling lol.

I lot of the tooling I bought is way too much for anything I'd be doing, I work with high school kids making parts to build competitive robots and it's all relatively small scale and almost exclusively aluminum. I also have no real formal training or experience in the field outside of this program, so while I'm able to identify things that we would be able to use, there are many tools I'm totally unable to identify.

I got everything as a package deal, with the hope that I can sell much of the tooling we don't need to recoup some of the money spent on the machines.


Most of the tooling I'm hoping to sell was inside two cabinets I got, each of the cabinets has 70 drawers that were full of various tools. I went ahead and took all of the drawers out and laid them out on tables so everything would be easier to handle. I'm going to attach some pictures of the cabinets and all the drawers.

It's going to take me a while to sort thru everything (this is just a volunteer gig, not my day job), but I figured I would start this thread now and ask questions as they come up


Once I've separated everything we want to keep and organized everything else, where's the best place to try to sell tooling like this? Is ebay the right place? Should I try to sell things individually with detailed photos/descriptions or just post bundles of stuff as lots?



Photos are all here


Thanks in advance!

Rob

How valuable is your time? For maximum return, individual sales would probably be best, but with a caveat. That would be many items may not sell at all and you would have spent considerable time just preparing each item for sale. I would suggest that you sell it by drawer lots first. Take good photos, so that each item can be identified by its photo. In some cases, placing a 6 inch rule beside an item is sufficient. I would post your sales here first, because it's free and then see what happens. Be prepared to answer question when they arise.

Most of that is pretty standard stuff. Lots of HSS endmills, reamers, Morse taper shank drills,
counterbores,counter sinks, shell mills, a vise handle, corner rounding endmills, SAE port tools,drill bushings, boxes of inserts, taps, a button die, etc

All of those HSS tools are an oldtimer's wet dream. Lubricated with dark cutting oil for sure.

You have quite a bit of stuff there, but not much that looks like its worth much.

People sell high speed steel end mills on ebay by the pound.

For myself, as a home shop guy, thing's like readers, taps, dies, bushings, drill rod are useful if the price is right just to have on hand.

I'd be interested in some of the endmills.
(at the right price of course )

based on recent experience the large HSS endmills will be hard to offload, the smaller HSS endmills will be easier in mixed lots of 20-30. Same for drills and reamers. The indexable facemills (largish round things with multiple carbide inserts) will net decent money, as will carbide in general.

To be honest alot of the smaller stuff would be best to keep for the kids working with the machines. HSS is pretty forgiving and if you have a bucket of 50 1/4" endmills you won't be too bothered when one of them gets broken.

I could be interested in some of the roughing endmills & reamers
thanks

animal

well, I'd guess you are new to buying at auction, and to the metalworking field. there is a reason you got this lot "for cheap".

un-packaged HHS end mills are never considered worth paying for by professionals (or serious hobbyists unless they have a lot of time and nothing better to do than sort through (dull) tooling). there is simply no way to really asses them for quality and condition economically unless they are free, and you have "free" time.

as you will probably learn, storing cutting tools in contact with each other in a drawer is one sure way to destroy the cutting edge, and although side by side is better than tossed in a bucket, these could be low quality to begin with and dull and or chipped, which would make them not worth the trouble to scrap them.

I hope you weren't counting on selling this stuff to actually defray the cost of anything, let alone your time. sorry to be the messenger, but that's just what it looks like from what we can see. maybe you got lucky and they are quality and well cared for AND somehow still sharp, in which case keep them and use them.

I would sell it by the pound on Ebay or for scrap.

Garwood said:

I would sell it by the pound on Ebay or for scrap.

Click to expand...

May be wrong, but...

Gonna depend entirely on condition.

Were I in your shoes, I would be looking at trying to get the kids working on a CNC Cutter grinder to sharpen and use all those.

All the "Good" cutters I ever stuffed in a drawer, were in their original plastic containers. When I see a whack load of cutters stacked loose in drawers, all it says to me is that some dude was too cheap to throw away the used goods. Coulda stored them in a bucket, for all that's worth.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of that stuff likely has life left in it, just not in any commercial sense!

Most home shop guys will not not be interested in any end mills with over a 3/4 shank.And if any are sharp they will need to be individaluly wraped to keep them that way during shipping . Carbide inserts !! there are sooo many types/sizes in those types etc. Maybe .50-$1 each on ebay. Before all is said and done with that tooling I'm going to bet you wish you had never bid on those cabinets !! If it were me I would number each drawer and sell for $10-15 per drawer plus shipping. Still going to be a giant pain the the ass !!

Let me know what type of inserts you have.
Also, what are in the blue cardboard tubes?
You can message me this information if you prefer.

If it were me, I'd go through it piece by piece, keep the sharp stuff that I needed/wanted, sell the rest.

Porting tools, expandable reamer, identifiable specialized easily shippable sharp tooling - eBay. The rest? You're in CT, craigslist reaches a lot of interested people within a short distance.

Going through it depends on how you value your time and how curious you are. There's a lot of information there for the uninitiated.

Neilho has it about right.
I think some are being a bit harsh considering you are helping train some future machinists. There are a lot of endmills that still have the wax on which means they are new or resharps. The good part is you have a lot of stuff in those drawers. I saw a lot of useful stuff for the students like those high helix end mills which are really good for aluminum or wood. You also have a lot of ball nose which can be very handy when you need a certain size and you probably have it in there somewhere. There is one or two drawers full of counter bores with insert pilots which are very useful.
Organize things by OD size and price them individually, like 1" endmills- $3 with wax, $2 plain, $4 ball nose etc. Get the kids to help with the sorting and then advertise and have a one day sale first come first serve. Set a goal for the total that you want/need to recoup and after you hit that target just discount/ bundle the rest and move it fast if you can.

Good luck with the sale.

Where in CT?

I'm interested in the drawer/tray of aircraft countersinks.

smt

FRC2168 said:

I work with high school kids making parts to build competitive robots and it's all relatively small scale and almost exclusively aluminum. I also have no real formal training or experience in the field outside of this program, so while I'm able to identify things that we would be able to use, there are many tools I'm totally unable to identify.

Click to expand...

Like others pointed out, this may be a time intensive operation, but... If you can engage your group of kids, this may be an opportunity for them to learn about the tools and also about the online commerce. In other words have them go through the pile, and list the items on Ebay. Figure out an incentive structure so that everyone benefits fairly.