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Vent: Tried a cheap end mill from a liquidation pallet and it chattered like crazy
I picked up a box of random 1/4 inch end mills for $20 at a surplus place near Akron. Figured even if half were junk, it'd be a steal. Put one in the machine yesterday and it sounded like a jackhammer on aluminum (6061, nothing tough). Learned that saving 5 bucks a tool isn't worth it when you have to scrap a part worth $40. Anyone else run into bad batches from bulk buys?
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josephl6726d ago
Yeah man I used to think bulk buys were the way to go too, grab a pile of cutters for cheap and just sort through the good ones. But after one of those liquidated end mills sounded like a goddamn lawnmower on a simple slot pass I switched back to just buying a few decent ones at a time. That saved part woulda paid for a whole set of decent Chinese imports anyway.
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hart.cora26d ago
Read somewhere that those bulk deals are usually Chinese surplus that already got picked through by the guys doing the liquidating. They know what theyre doing so they pull out the sharp ones and sell the junk to hobbyists. Tbh you end up paying for the gamble and losing most of the time. I saw a video where a guy tested 50 end mills from a bulk lot and only 7 cut clean without chattering. At that point you're better off buying a handful of good brands like HTC or even the better import stuff. Ngl the price difference is worth not having to babysit every cut.
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murphy.barbara25d ago
Nah I gotta disagree with you there, I've been buying bulk end mill lots for about 3 years now from a guy who does tool liquidation and honestly it's not that bad. You just gotta know which liquidators to avoid, the ones that post blurry photos of a pile of cutters are the ones you skip. I got a lot of 40 carbide end mills from a shop that upgraded to a new machine and maybe 5 of them were chipped or had funny wear. The rest cut aluminum like butter, I'm still using 15 of them a year later and they hold up fine. And those videos online, you never know if the guy is buying from the sketchiest lot on eBay or what. I'd rather gamble 40 bucks on a bulk lot than spend 80 on 3 HTC cutters that will dull just as fast if you push them too hard.
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