Solid Carbide End mills vs Indexable?

[Jason @ CPM Industries]

I was just curious what people are using in their shops.  We are mostly using Solid Carbide endmills for cutting Iron, Aluminum and Steel.  

 

Thank you. 

[Pilot Plant Supervisor]

Solid carbide for  most things if cutter is less than .75 Dia. I use indexable ball endmills for finishing steel dies. Seco high feed indexable mills to rough.

[The Cathedral]

We use solid carbide mills for everything 5/8" and under. For drills, we have a metric crap ton of Iscar SumoCham indexable carbide and we use those on most things 5/16" up.

[Jason @ CPM Industries]

Thanks for the reply's.  What determines you to go with indexable for anything above 5/8" or 3/4".  

[The Cathedral]

Price. Solid carbide 3/4" shank is exponentially expensive, and we don't use it enough to warrant keeping a lot on hand taking up storage space.

[Jason @ CPM Industries]

Yes that makes sense. We usually go up to 1 inch because 130 dollars for american made isn't to bad.  We machine a lot of castings with hard spots and the solids blasts right through it.  

[Zoober]

Solid, because of dynamic paths where the axial depth of cut is the entire flute length.

[Jason @ CPM Industries]

Solid, because of dynamic paths where the axial depth of cut is the entire flute length.

Yes and dynamic paths are so much faster for material removal and less machine wear which can justify the little extra the cost of a solid cutter.

[Aeroguy]

Indexable for most roughing operations and floor finishing, and solid carbide for wall finishing and such. Indexable ballnose for contour finishing too. Although we have started doing dynamic roughing with solid carbides in certain situations. Depends on the part really.

[The Cathedral]

Indexable for most roughing operations and floor finishing, and solid carbide for wall finishing and such. Indexable ballnose for contour finishing too. Although we have started doing dynamic roughing with solid carbides in certain situations. Depends on the part really.

 

Solid carbide is perfect for dynamic roughing. Light stepover, no coolant. Using inserted cutters with dynamic roughing makes me nervous that it will rip an insert out.

[Jason @ CPM Industries]

How many times do you get your solid carbides re-sharpened?

[jeff]

How many times do you get your solid carbides re-sharpened?

It all depends on how many of them are snapped off at the shank by my guys.

 

I resharpen 1/2" dia and larger, usually until it's either too short or the web becomes too shallow.

As for total number of times I have no clue, it varies.