Mini Review - Accusize 1.25" end mill with R8 shank

[Fasturn]

By attempting to expose my ignorance,
you are exposing your own.

-D

Doozer.... Michael and I are going to hit your head with a balloon on a stick. Lol. Like to see you and him go at it in a real shop ? My money is on Doozer.

That FACE mill is cute as hell congrats. You are running it the right way for a 6x26 mill. Dont get too aggressive or you can crack the edges or worse, the bearings. My partner " Mold Shop " was plowing down H13 on a Bridgeport mill. Same face mill @ .200 doc. Bearings were shot in 4 weeks. Mill was a English BP 9 months old. These face mills are time savers for the CAT 40 - 50 boys, but be careful on the bench mills. For home projects, I try to stay away from steel as much as possible. For aluminum, run it as fast as the mill will run " RPM " and distroy it. At work we call it " White Pine". Now build some chip gards / curtains, for they fly everywhere.

[BCRider]

More testing.

First off was cutting this face away which has a harder spot and which instantly dulled a smaller size 1.7" sweep diameter HSS flycutter. The inserts pushed through like the spot wasn't even there. Doesn't even show as a different texture. The spot picked up in the orange circle shows a .06" DOC and the pass was about 3/4 the diameter of the cutter. This didn't bother the cutter itself. It still sizzled through the metal nicely and didn't even show up as an increase in the pressure at the handwheel. But it did get the belts in the head to start resonating slightly. Slowing down the feed a touch lowered but did not kill the belt resonance. So I went back to a feed rate which reduced the time for the pass, made small bot curly chips and left a very sweet smooth finish.



Next up was the trial for side cutting. I picked a depth that I commonly use with regular 1/2 inch four flute end mills which upon measuring turned out to be as close to 3/8 as matters. I set the DOC for this at .012 to try to get under the rust. I only pushed as far as shown because of the knocking it was doing. My mill isn't heavy and rigid enough and I could feel it through the handle. And I figured that the hammering was likely not good for the carbide either. So that is the end of THAT idea.



It did FAR better with the little step you see in the next picture. In an odd fit of squareness when I checked the width and depth after this random setting for the test it was 0.120 for depth and 0.122 for width. Not bad for blind luck, eh? Anyway this time it wasn't the belts. Now the cutter, or rather, the whole machine was starting to resonate. It never got overly loud but it was on the edge. When I make cuts of even double this cross section with a 1/2" regular end mill there's no theatrics at all. Something in the dynamics of how the larger diameter works compared to the smaller diameter. Finish in the step surfaces though is just shy of mirror like on both the surfaces. On a heavier machine I think this could do nicely for stepped edges. Oh, and to avoid the beating that I would have gotten with a side entry I actually started from above and cut down to depth first. Then I traversed along the cut. This meant that the edges were in contact for longer and perhaps even the next insert was engaged before the first "surfaced" out the back of the cut. I think this helped a lot with avoiding the hammering I got with my attempt to just clean up the end with a side cut.



So all in all it would appear that I've got a very nice new small face mill.... at least as far as my mill is concerned that's what it will be.

I hope this helps some of you and new folks in the future.

By the way, my mini knee mill is the same one sold by the Busy Bee as the Craftex CX603. It is also similar to but taller with more Z than the Grizzly G0729.

[Fasturn]

Craftex CX603 ~ Can you believe the price for this today ? Mine was $1800. Great evaluation of the face mill vs the bench mill. As you can see steel has its limits on a small machine. Wait to you try the new inserts for Aluminum. You will be impressed with the results !! Mine came with a Chi- com 4 insert mill cutter. Just for a .030 mil clean up, it works fine. Like ur mill, its not a BP, but for a home shop they are impressive.

[Tundra Twin Track]

What RPM were you running for the test runs?

[RB211]

I also use mine for removing scale off HR, leaves a beautiful finish.

[BCRider]

Fasturn, yeah, it's crazy! I paid $3200 taxes in when it was on closeout for the last of their green ones. The grey that came out right after was $1000 more for no reasons that I could see. And now it's "on sale" for $7000 ? ! ? !

TTT, I was running at a modest 745 RPM which the online calculator tells me is 244FPM. A check on a couple of charts shows that this is right at the lower end of the suggested SFM range for mild steel. I'm OK with that thanks to the nice finish I'm getting. Plus it'll give me the added frugal benefit of long life span for the inserts.

In fact it's the same RPM that I use for 3/8 and 1/2 inch HSS end mills. So that's handy too!

I'm sure it would be equally happy at around 1000 to 1100. But the next step up on the pulleys is 1400. And that would be 458 SFPM. And that's getting up near the max SFM for mild steel. I could try it but I'd also need to feed it twice as fast to keep the chips looking the same light but curly look. And that would likely load up the belts and motor and cause some operatic shrieking sounds as the mill tries to turn too much solid into fine chips in too short a time. At 745 and up to around .04 for DOC it's all sweet and happy. I think I'd like to keep it that way. I'm taking roughly 1" wide passes in the tests at around 3 to 4 seconds per turn of the hand wheel. So 2 to 1.6 inches per minute? I'll have to run a stop watch for ten turns of the handwheel when I use it next time. No power feed yet. No DRO either. That's the next thing. THEN the second cutter for aluminium.

No lie on the finish! As I said above it's glass smooth to a fingernail dragged over the surface but with the sort of flaked look you'd expect from a very sweet many spots per square inch scraping job. But only after I tuned in that one cutter to fall in line with the other two. So it wasn't all wine and roses.... But close!

I may just tell everyone that the pattern is my unique circular action with the hand scraper....

[Video Man]

If you want to add a set of APKT end mills to your collection, I just bought these on sale at Amazon, from WEN Usa. Very nice quality tool holders, even a fitted case. Less than $60 for 3/8, 1/2 and 5/8 tool holders with inserts. They work nice. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...380_em_1p_7_lm

[old mart]

Thats a nice set of smaller APKT insert mills. One advantage of these being the replacable double ended inserts. You can go for jobs where there is a risk of spoiling a one piece HSS or solid carbide cutter. I use APKT 11 AND 16 (ISO sizes), in steel and aluminium grades, and diameters from 10mm to 80mm, one to six insert capacity.

[Dan Dubeau]

Just finished turning a 1" accusize apkt stick tool into this 1" TTS tool. (turned shank down to 0.750" and pressed on homemade TTS flange)


I probably wont get to try it out until the weekend, but I'll report back how it does. I'm encouraged by your results BC.

[RB211]

Just finished turning a 1" accusize apkt stick tool into this 1" TTS tool. (turned shank down to 0.750" and pressed on homemade TTS flange)


I probably wont get to try it out until the weekend, but I'll report back how it does. I'm encouraged by your results BC.

This is exactly what I just made, but from a .75" shank Shars 1" face mill, pressed on a Tormach collar for the Taig.

[Dan Dubeau]

Ok, just got home from work, and still had a bit of gas in the tank so I fired up the Tormach and played around with whatever scrap was within reach. Some 6061, some aluminum bronze, and some 4140ph. I shot from the hip with RPM for now, but played around with DOC/WOC for some simple facing operations, and am pretty pleased with the results. Very nice surface finish from the std apkt inserts that came with it. I have some apmt, apkt, and apgt on the way to try as well.




The Tormach really didn't like the 4140ph with my initial doc of 0.03" lol. Reduced DOC (to 0.01") and feed and it came out like a mirror though. I love hard milling. Don't plan on doing any of it at home, but do a fair bit at work sometimes (comes in waves). I'm pretty sure the Tormach would not like prolonged hardmilling though.....

The picture is
albr 0.02" DOC, 1500RPM, 10fpm (bottom)
4140ph 0.01"DOC, 1500rpm, 10fpm (top right)
6061 0.05" DOC, 3500rpm, 10fpm (top left)

I was feeding with the hand jog wheel which is why all the feedrates are the same. I fed up to 25pfm with obvious reductions in surface finish. I'll play around a bit more to dial in some solid speeds and feeds (and maybe even bust out a calculator and do the math on proper sfm) for the various materials I encounter, and go from there. Pretty happy with the results from 5 minutes of using it but there is a lot more I can push this tool. I'm more concerned with surface finish, than MRR.

This is exactly what I just made, but from a .75" shank Shars 1" face mill, pressed on a Tormach collar for the Taig.

I thought about getting a 3/4, but wanted the shoulder to press against, as well as the larger swath from the 1". I was a bit concerned about the Tormach's ability to spin it, but my concerns are unfounded after tonight's quick test. It should be fine.

[BCRider]

Just finished turning a 1" accusize apkt stick tool into this 1" TTS tool. ......
I probably wont get to try it out until the weekend, but I'll report back how it does. I'm encouraged by your results BC.

Please do. Either here or your other thread about this conversion.

I'm slowly dipping my own toes into the carbide insert world after having gotten "carbide frostbite" some years back with the then low cost inserts that crumbled if one looked at them at all sternly. So any and all success stories and the sort of work done is helping me.

EDIT- I was so keen to reply that I didn't notice the first use report right below your first post. That's some mighty fine looking results. Your RPM figure make me think that I'll at least try the 1450 RPM and 458 SFM at least once. Of course we're also talking about 1.0 vs 1.25" diameters. But it's worth a try at least.

[Dan Dubeau]

My 1500rpm was a bit ambitious for the 4140ph...., but that's what I had it set to from the albr, and didn't change it. I also didn't know it was ph, until I touched off on it and started making a pass lol. Just some mystery metal that was within grabbing range. Whenever I get a new tool I always go to the stock manufactures #'s and back it down a bit from there. They know their tools, and know how they run, But they're also in the business of selling inserts..... I find insert life drastically increases at about 70-80% of what they say they can do, and the reduction in MRR is usually no real consequence for the work I do. Production yes, toolroom 1 off situations, no. You can decrease insert life running too slow too, so there is a sweet spot in there somewhere that needs to be explored and experimented with. I'm sure there is a lot of data out there on apkt inserts, but I've yet to look any of it up yet. I have some investigating and some brain reprogramming to do.

[BCRider]

I read ya!

It might be fanciful thinking but I count a lot on how the "look, feel and sound" from both the machine and the tool bits. I think I also cut the speeds on a lot of tasks down after watching a bunch of Keith Fenner's earlier videos. I noticed that he ran most jobs lower than what I felt look normal for me. I started with running drills at a lower speed and finding that they cut well and seemed to "overcut" the bores a little less than when used with higher speeds. For the lathe I was already running at "Fenner" like RPMs vs size so not much change there. But the big one for me was running the HSS end mills a bit slower which let them cut just fine and last a LOT longer.

[Dan Dubeau]

At work I tend to run the same tooling, on the same materials, on similar but different parts, on the same machines. It all becomes monotonous over the years. Every few years I'll get some new insert cutter and have to play around with it to find how it runs, and then I jam those numbers into my tool library and rarely revisit them. Same for drills, Everything is stored in the tool tables after running the #'s and running a few jobs to prove it out. I get used to how a tool sounds when running, and can hear the pitch change to know it's starting to drop an edge. CNC's are like that, you're down a sense compared to a manual, so paying attention to the #'s is more important than when cranking handles. When I do crank handles I tend to reply on feel and my eyes more than the #'s.

Since getting the tormach I've had to start calculating stuff again and playing around with it, as it's much different than the HAAS vmcs at work. The tooling and jobs I do are different too. I still don't have that good of a baseline with the tooling I have on it, and haven't really pushed it that much yet. The good news is the information is out there, and it doesn't have to be a guessing game. Run the #'s to get a good safe starting point, and then push it up and down to suit your requirements. Some guys just love running everything balls out and buried, BOOOOOM (titan reference). Other guys (myself included) would rather not have to keep changing inserts to save a couple minutes of a hour long cycle time, when the machine is just going to sit idle afterwards. It's nice to know how much you can push them when you need to, and there are times when you do, but in my little home shop where the insert money is coming out of my shallow pockets, and the jobs aren't paying for it, I will not needlessly chase cycle time. If I had a stack of work I needed to get done in a hurry, sure, crank it up and let the chips fly.