# Russian & Chinese Involute Gear Cutters On Ebay



## omni_dilletante (Oct 24, 2015)

*Short Question:*

Does anyone have any first hand experience with any of the Chinese or Russian involute gear cutting sets we see on ebay?

For example M1.25 PA20 $59.78 or DP16 PA14.5 $129.69 ​
*More Details:*

I am looking to cut some gears.  The first project will use DP16 & DP20, or M1.5 & M1.25 gears.

Searching for individual cutters on eBay is pretty time consuming as sellers do not follow a consistent description format and searching is hit and miss.

There are a number of cutter sets that are attractively priced from China and Russia.  I have searched the forum to see if anyone has reported their experience with these and could only find one comment that the teeth were not concentric with the bore.

I know the high road is to purchase american made cutters, but I don't have the budget for that.​


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## samthedog (Oct 24, 2015)

Russian machine tools are generally high quality. They were using carbide and diamond tooling long before we were in the West and were quite advanced in their metallurgy. I wouldn't hesitate if the cutters are genuine Russian.

Paul.


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## rgray (Oct 24, 2015)

Most of mine are B&S but I have a couple of Chinese cutters. They cut fine worst thing is they are not marked or stamped. So keeping them identified is a pain. Not sure if they all are like that but mine had no markings.


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## Chipper5783 (Oct 24, 2015)

Yes, check my avitar.  I made change gears for my spiral milling unit (1.5 module).  The 4 cutters identified for the range of teeth I cut (24 up to 105)  cost about $70CAD delivered (took about 10 days to arrive).

http://www.hobby-machinist.com/thre...g-and-boring-machine-mh600.30766/#post-313945

I cut 1507 teeth in all (probably over 1000 teeth with the last cutter).  The material was 1018 for the smaller gears and repurposed 4140 / 4340 for the larger gears.  No issues with the cutters at all.  My set up was pretty sturdy and I did not push the cutting speed.  I did not use coolant (couple drops of Tapmagic on for each tooth).  I did each tooth in a single pass.

The biggest issue was the bore size (20 mm).  My arbors are 5/8", 7/8" & 1".  I made up a drive sleeve for the 5/8" (using small stubs of dowel pin for the drive keys).

I don't know if the teeth were perfectly concentric with the bore.  You could certainly hear from the cut that there was some variation.  However, with a decent feedrate, all teeth were taking some material.  Was my adapter sleeve perfect, was my arbor & drive arrangement perfect, .... ?  It worked out great.

What are you building?


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## joshua43214 (Oct 24, 2015)

This is an interesting topic for me. There was a set of "Russian" gear cutters for sale at a good price on Ebay a while ago that I almost grabbed. They would ship from the Ukraine.
They where marked "USSR," and the other letters were Roman as well, which scared me off. I would have expected anything Soviet to be written in Cyrillic and be tagged "CCP."
Probably just my ignorance about European import/export rules from back then though.

My lathe has some eccentric running gears, and I expect I will have to make my own replacements.


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## hermetic (Oct 24, 2015)

Check out "Doubleboost" on you tube, John has just bought a set of the Chinese ones and had no problems with them.
Phil


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## jeff_g1137 (Oct 24, 2015)

hermetic said:


> Check out "Doubleboost" on you tube, John has just bought a set of the Chinese ones and had no problems with them.
> Phil



Hi
Have a look at this, John's a good lad.


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## omni_dilletante (Oct 24, 2015)

Thank you for the information.

I have ordered a set of cutters.  I will update the thread when I get a chance to use them.


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## joshua43214 (Oct 25, 2015)

Ya, John is maybe my favorite to watch. His video on making the adaptor for the big boring head is possibly one of the finest examples of doing precision work on machines that are not able to do precision work. He gets more out of those machines than many people with high end machines do.


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## Ulma Doctor (Oct 25, 2015)

this is slightly off topic, but i have purchased a few Russian straightedges and measuring devices from the retailer on Ebay that shipped from the Ukraine
http://www.ebay.com/usr/ti.tools?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
i thought there may be some type of problem getting stuff from Russia, so i only made a small purchase the first time.
I was pleasantly surprised how quickly i rec'd the shipment and the high quality of the Russian made stuff.
i made 2 other purchases since and could not be happier with the price, the shipping, and the quality of their products.
i have no connection with TI Tools, just a very happy customer with good stuff to say about them.

all that being said,
i did make my purchases before the recent conflicts in the Ukraine.
i can only speculate how this may or may not affect present or future shipments, 
ebay will give you your money back if the shipment fails to reach you


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## omni_dilletante (Oct 27, 2015)

First set of cutters arrived today.




I do have a couple of small B&S cutters that appear to be unused.  Comparing the two:

The B&S has 12 teeth and the Import 14
The B&S has a 7/8" bore, the Import 22mm
I believe the B&S has the depth of cut stamped on it (.180"), the import does not.  No paperwork with the cutters, not quite sure if this is standard value or not.
The engraving on the import does not look very deep.  I will need to give some thought to how I keep track of these if the markings wear off.
As mentioned elsewhere the B&S #1 is 135 to rack and the import #1 is 12-13 teeth.  I think I will be able to not confuse the cutters and find the correct one for the job.
I will not be able to sharpen the import as often as I can the B&S, but I don't plan on living long enough for that to be an issue.




The import tooth grind:




The B&S tooth grind:




The grind shaping the tooth and tooth face seem to have the same quality.  At least as far as the roughness. 

Unfortunately I have to turn an arbor to use these with my milling machine.  So I will have to provide an update on how they cut at a later date.

I also ordered some cutters from another vendor that appear to come from a different factory.  Those were even less expensive.  I will provide some pictures when they arrive.


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## brino (Oct 28, 2015)

Hi omni,

Thanks for sharing your experiences here.
I have been considering buying some gear cutters too, so it's good to have some first hand feedback.

I'd be interested to know the second vendor too, if the quality is okay.

Since those two cutters have such different key widths, you'll either need 

two arbours, 

one arbour with two keyway slots, or
one arbour with a wide slot and a "stepped" key
I have heard of other horizontal milling cutters used on an arbour without a key, just using the compression of the spacers and nut to hold the cutter. It adds a bit of safety as the cutter can spin before something gets broken. I dunno if that approach is suitable here, I guess material, depth of cut and feed rates all play into it.

-brino


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## omni_dilletante (Oct 28, 2015)

The B&S is 7/8" bore and the Import is 22mm (I edited the post to reflect that) . That is why I need a new arbor.  

One of the reasons I purchased the other set of cutters where I did was they they had a 22mm bore instead of a 20mm or 16mm as I found from other sources.  I would prefer to minimize the number of arbors I build.

The Horizontal arbor on my Hardinge UM does not have a keyway.  Evidently they thought a keyway was not needed.


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## omni_dilletante (Nov 3, 2015)

On 10/26/15 I ordered three more sets of involute cutters: M1.25, M1.00 and M0.50.   I ordered these to go with my DP16 set as they are basically DP20, DP25 and DP51.  Another motivation was that they all had 22mm bore so I could use them all on the arbor I am making.

These cutters were very cheap.  The three sets with shipping from China came to $178.15.  I was not quite sure what to expect.  I anticipated a long wait as the estimated arrival times were 11/6 to 11/21.  They arrived on yesterday on 11/2, a week after I ordered them.

These did not arrive in a nice box like the first set.




It looks like they all came from the same factory, but with a wide variety of packaging.  Perhaps these are remnants of other orders assembled to create full sets?

The first problem was that the M0.5 cutters seemed pretty small to have a 22mm bore.  Sure enough, they have a 16mm bore.  I have initiated a return via ebay.

I unwrapped the other cutters and got them ready for a bath.




For the most part they cleaned up pretty good.  Grinds look as good as the others although the markings are a bit weaker.







Two of the M1.0 cutters did not look too good.  Both showed signs of inclusions in the blanks from which they were cut.  One cutter had some minor pitting that I would probably let slide if not for the second one.  This one has some pretty bad pitting that is on some of the important cutting faces.







I have contacted the seller about replacing these two cutters, or the entire set.

The 22mm arbor is coming along pretty good.  I will post updates when I can use the cutters and about the return process.


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## hman (Nov 4, 2015)

Good grief!!!  Looks like a horrendous case of tooth decay!


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## MozamPete (Nov 5, 2015)

I had a set of Chinese cutters I ordered arrive today.  DP20, 14.5 P.A., 16mm bore.



After unwrapping



No major problems with them but there is no doubt that they are not the same quality as the one American made cutter I have.  Some minor corrosion or inclusions in the base metal but nothing that effects the cutting edge like Omni's photos.  And as mentioned by others the identification on them is a bit light,






All in all I think they will do fine for the low volume of gear cutting I'm planning to do.


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## carlquib (Nov 5, 2015)

My experience with the Chinese and russian cutters is similar to others. The russian cutters and hobbs I have ordered have been excellent quality. I'm sure they are new old stock. Some of them have had minor surface rust which isn't a problem except when you polish the rust off the laser engraving goes too. The Chinese cutters and hobbs I have received have been of acceptable quality and unfortunately I can buy a complete set of Chinese cutters for less than the cost of one made in USA. I like the Chinese and russian hobbs too, $40 delivered for a dp 10 14 1/2 pa hob.
-Brian

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk


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## Charles Spencer (Nov 6, 2015)

omni_dilletante said:


> On 10/26/15 I ordered three more sets of involute cutters: M1.25, M1.00 and M0.50.   I ordered these to go with my DP16 set as they are basically DP20, DP25 and DP51.  Another motivation was that they all had 22mm bore so I could use them all on the arbor I am making.
> 
> These cutters were very cheap.  The three sets with shipping from China came to $178.15.  I was not quite sure what to expect.  I anticipated a long wait as the estimated arrival times were 11/6 to 11/21.  They arrived on yesterday on 11/2, a week after I ordered them.
> 
> ...




I believe that I owe you a big "thank you".  Judging from the size and the price I also ordered a set of gear cutters from the same seller as you.  On Tuesday I got an email from the seller saying that there would be a delay shipping them because of quality issues.  I mentioned it in this thread:

http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/i-finally-caught-a-deal.39719/

They said I could wait for their next shipment or get a refund.  As I said in the above link I didn't answer right away.  The next morning I bought a bunch of tooling off Craigslist.  The purchase included involute gear cutters made by Union Twist Drill Company in Athol, Mass.  I contacted the seller and said I'd prefer a refund, which I got.

So I figure you saved me that money.


Thank you,

Charles


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## omni_dilletante (Nov 7, 2015)

Finished the 22mm arbor this morning and made some test cuts in Aluminum.

Very pleased that they cut with minimal noise.  Evidently my arbor and the cutters are concentric, or by magic the errors lined up and cancelled each other out.

It appears these came from two factories.  The first factory marks the cutters with a a T in a Circle.  This cutter seemed to make a nice finish in aluminum.







The other cutters  are marked with a star followed by an I.  These also seemed to leave a nice finish.




No more time for machining this weekend.  I will post examples when I manage to cut some gears.


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## omni_dilletante (Jan 22, 2016)

A quick update.

I found that one of the cutters I purchased would not fit onto my arbor.  It took some time to work with the vendor to get a refund so I could purchase a replacement cutter.

For one manufacturer I got:

Cutters that cost much less than the competition ~60$
A set of cutters that were advertised as a 22mm bore but arrived with a 16mm bore
Two cutters with large pits and voids in the material (see pictures posted earlier in thread)
One cutter that would not fit onto the arbor.

I cannot read the package, so I cannot tell you the name, but they logo looks like this:





In contrast to this...

Another manufacturer provided cutters that appeared to be very good quality, no issues with voids or fit on the arbor.  Their logo looks like this:


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## MozamPete (Jan 22, 2016)

Looks like I got lucky for once - I brought one set and it was from the better of you two manufacturers.


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