Machining Aluminum With Carbide Inserts

[dieselshadow]

I need to work on some aluminum spacers for a tractor. They don't quite fit and I need to increase the depth of the flange bore for the axle flanges to fully seat. I recently acquired my new lathe and some basic tooling which only includes some carbide insert tooling with the gold colored inserts. Is it ok to use these to machine the aluminum or do I need to get some different inserts or tools?

 

[rwm]

Carbide is all I use. It is said to be possible to get a nicer finish with HSS if you know what you are doing. Apparently I don't since I think the carbide finish looks great!
R

 

[TOOLMASTER]

should work fine

 

[dieselshadow]

Thanks guys. I really need to learn up about inserts. It's very overwhelming and I don't seem to have much time.

 

[Subwayrocket]

This is some video , facing Aluminum with a carbide insert. I roughed off my welds on this piece with an M42 end mill ...then faced it in the video below with a carbide insert. I try a few practice scrap pieces first to get the right feed rate for the speed. If I dont "dial in" the feed rate then the finish doesn't come out as nice. Good luck with it ...post some pics !
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[bfd]

carbide is fine to machine alum. there are different grades for different purposes. that's a whole different post. the gold coating is titanium nitride. it is for wear resistance mostly for production work. If you would be making thousands of parts on a cnc machine then would you buy that coating. don't waste your money by replacing then with the same. there might be a case on high wear items that might be helped by this coating. While you are learning you will ruin more carbides than you will wear out get practice first then get coated carbides. what you have will work fine. the most ruined carbides while learning will be from going past center. this changes the direction of rotation in relation to the edge and will chip off the cutting edge. stop on center. bill

 

[Eddyde]

The Carbide inserts will work great. However, you really should try using HSS as well. It cuts aluminum and most steels, not hard to learn and pre ground tools are available to get you started. HSS leaves a great finish, is easy to grind into any shape tool you need and very inexpensive.

 

[chips&more]

Along with trying to cut the aluminum with Carbide or HSS you might want to also use a cutting fluid/oil. Many folks have said they like using WD40 as a cutting fluid/oil. Personally, I just grab whatever is close and don’t really see or notice any difference in what I grab…Dave

 

[Subwayrocket]

Like chips&more said , the cutting oil i'm using above is just a mixture of what i had lying around . It's about half Rotella and other opened oil quarts , 1/4 walmart ATF , 1/4 chainsaw bar oil all combined in a gallon jug and thinned out a little with deisel . Seems to be working fine for steels and Alum so far .

 

[wrmiller]

Other than one old piece I ground for ID threading, I don't own any HSS bits. Everything is done with carbide. Since adding the FogBuster filled with A9 the finish is great. Ain't bad for steel either.