Carbide & HSS tooling...or is it??

[craniac]

I am sorry if this comes off badly.
1. The item description is what you will receive " high speed steel tian coating" not carbide. The pictured is just a picture.
The discrepancy is the description is not a mistake, people get in such a rush that they will see the description and price and just graze over the description, "it's only 13.00" Most won't go through the return process for 13.00
and they sure aren't going to send 8 carbide end mills out because they made a mistake.
After they argue the item description is what you received.
Buyer beware.
Buy from inside of America from brick and stone business. this COUNTRY is dependent upon it.
2. What the Hell did you think you were going to get for 15 bucks?
I just bought two 3/8 4 flute double end endmills, they are HSS.
They were 31.00 each.

The OP is from South Africa- so buying from inside America from a brick and stone business is not an option. Shipping is tough too. Even sending something from the US to members in SA is challenging.

 

[Suzuki4evr]

I am sorry if this comes off badly.
1. The item description is what you will receive " high speed steel tian coating" not carbide. The pictured is just a picture.
The discrepancy is the description is not a mistake, people get in such a rush that they will see the description and price and just graze over the description, "it's only 13.00" Most won't go through the return process for 13.00
and they sure aren't going to send 8 carbide end mills out because they made a mistake.
After they argue the item description is what you received.
Buyer beware.
Buy from inside of America from brick and stone business. this COUNTRY is dependent upon it.
2. What the Hell did you think you were going to get for 15 bucks?
I just bought two 3/8 4 flute double end endmills, they are HSS.
They were 31.00 each.

What you say is all good,but first impression on the page is that it is carbide and then the description it states HSS and that is a bit of misleading and false advertising. But yes buyer beware. And like craniac said, I am in South Africa so buying from in the US is impossible.

 

[MrCrankyface]

I buy a lot from amazon and ebay, it's always a bit hit and miss and pretty much impossible to tell what grade of material you're getting.
Pretty much only thing you can say for sure is that if it's cheap, it's going to be a lot worse than the "brand-name-stuff".
"Chinesium" has it's place though, I use a lot of low quality carbide inserts, works good enough and doesn't hurt your wallet as much when you crash it into something.

 

[Shotgun]

What I tend to do is buy ONE of the cheapest chinesium I can find. If it doesn't suck completely, I may buy more. I just bought 60 inserts (ccmt and such) from Alibabba for $30. That's $0.50 each. The name brand "American Made" are looking for $10 to $15 each. The $0.50 inserts work just peachy.

A dirty secret of a lot of the "American Made" brands, is that they're really made in China, just during the day. Then the night shift comes in and everything is made with the same materials on the same machines, but with a slightly different sticker put on them. Cisco did this, and then was surprised when the clones still had their trademark information in the source code.

That said, I know that every time I buy one of these cheap tools, that I'm rolling dice that the $0.50 part will do the work to some level of acceptable. The $15 just gives you the confidence that you know you won't have to throw it out and wait on another shipment. If I were doing this for a living. . . ah hell, who do I think I am kidding. Y'all know I'd do the same **** thing.

If you need endmills, look at getting some regrinds. I bought some for $6 each off eBay a couple weeks ago. The 1/2" endmill only had 3/8" cutting length, but I can't even cut that deep on a Rong-Fu 30 clone, so it isn't much of a problem.