Spent $80 on fancy end mills for one job and messed up the feed rate

I bought a set of expensive coated carbide end mills for a stainless steel job last month thinking they would save me time. Turns out my feed rate was way too slow and I chipped three of them in the first hour. Anyone else have a pricey tool fail because of a simple setup mistake?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia_hayes11d ago

The trick that saved me was running a test pass on scrap first with the same material and feeds. You can also start on the conservative side with a faster feed and work up slowly until the chips look right. That way you catch problems before you wreck the good cutters.

jason1111d ago

My buddy Ron did the exact same thing with a set of Mikron tools he bought for a hardened die job. Chipped two of them before he realized his RPM was way off. He was cussing up a storm in the shop, said it felt like throwing cash straight into the chip tray. Now he triple checks his speeds and feeds on the control panel before hitting start.