Carbide Insert Tool Holders

[rossbotics]

I personally do not use indexable carbide turning inserts, not that I have anything against them nor have I not used them in my 44 years in this trade, I just prefer cobalt high speed steel over carbide inserts, I do however use brazed carbide tipped lathe tools for hard steels, I have 25 -30 solid carbide end mills and use them religiously.

A couple of weeks ago I was at a yard sale and I noticed five boxes of these tin coated 60° triangular inserts lying on a table that were marked $1.00 a piece and labeled TCMT 3/8” IC (inside circle), without any thinking I gave the lady $5.00 thanked her and left, so with these 50 triangular inserts I decided to make a set of Turning, Facing and Chamfering Tool Holders.

The straight turning tool holder was made with a 1/4” left hand offset so I could work close to the chuck, the inserts seat is milled in the holder so that the insert has a 3° inverted point for turning up to a shoulder and then squaring the shoulder by turning the cross feed on the lathe out, the 45° turning and facing holder is milled so the cutting edge of the inserts are at 45° to the axis of the lathe.

The tool holders were made from O-1 tool steel hardened and tempered; the insert holders were only ground flat on the bottom after the heat treatment, the rest of the tool holder was left blackened from the heat treating process to act as a rust inhibitor, the seats where the inserts lay were then ground parallel to the bottom of the holder.

I made a special fixture to hold the tool holders so I could machine there edges, all this fixture does is acts like a shim to lift the work piece up off the mill table so I can machine the edge of the work piece without cutting into the mill table, the fixture also has a shoulder on it to locate the edge of the work piece, this fixture was also made from O-1 tool steel hardened and ground, I have future uses for this fixture not just a one time deal.

Below you will find some photos of the machining process along with the turning tool being used to turn down a planer shaft.

As always thanks for looking and happy machining
Doug

[bruce.desertrat]

Man, I'm hitting all the wrong yard sales!

[Toolmaker51]

Man, I'm hitting all the wrong yard sales!

That used to happen to me. Learned to drive right by any with kids toys, mumu's, purses, or racks of clothes displayed too prominently.
Best stop ever, left with Yuasa 5C Indexer, and Yuasa Semi-Universal Indexer w/ Tailstock. Yeah took some money, but now 20-25+ years later a pittance for what they are now. I'm talking equals, not Chinesium interpretations.
For awhile, did very well on Ebay too, especially I suppose my rotary tables. Other than fact they were shipped, practically stole them.
It's kind of like real estate, without jokers and glamour-shot business cards.
i.e. lathe in avatar. 33 bidders, likely country-wide, 60 miles from my home. Went to check it out, decided on comparable value and that no-one else was going to get it. Reliable Tool, Irwindale CA, since closed. Now I recommend Cal-Aero, Paramount CA.
Stuff like that you really have to evaluate value; NOT price, very quickly. I probably have examined 10,000 significant items, and know when to jump. I understood market in Southern California living there 50 years. Prior to moving, realized the volume here would be seriously less available so I looked more intensely for tooling I consider critical.

[Ralphxyz]

Great project, I like you tapping tool do you have a write up on it or was that also a yard sale buy?

Ralph

[rossbotics]

No Ralphxyx I didn't get the tapping machine from a yard sale, LOL, that's a good one, LOL
I have the Tapping Machine listed in the tool plans for sale, want to build one ?

[Ralphxyz]

Thanks Doug, I have one (tapping tool) on my list.

It would be nice to work from someone else's plan instead of having to think through my own.

Ralph

[Ralphxyz]

I bought your plans for the tapping machine, now I have to remember where I put them once I get around to making it.

Where do you buy the spiral taps, it would be nice to not have to back off, also would be nice for power tapping I would imagine.

Ralph

[Frank S]

Ralph if you can't remember where you put them you can always look in your download folder if you have windooze for and OS it will put it there by default as it is being downloaded
My download folder gets so huge that I often move everything out of it to a thumb drive. I may not ever (hopefully never) need them but things are in them just the same even though I will probably forget what I was looking for by the time I search through them someday.

[rossbotics]

Thanks Ralph
You can get spiral point taps from e-bay, amazon, I get 90% of everything I use from e-bay, including metals

[PJs]

Thanks Doug for making us drool again with your build quality and 10 cents apiece on the TCMT's. Those inserts are the same I use on the peanut and go for about $1 each cheapest I've found. I didn't understand what you meant by "the inserts seat is milled in the holder so that the insert has a 3° inverted point for turning up to a shoulder"? Do you mean you ground it with a 3° positive rake. I'm pretty sure the inserts generally come with about a 7°. If so you reduced the rake to get a better face out to the edge of the material? Cornfused...Sorry, Dense sometimes.

PJ