First Set End Mills???

I would skip the end mill holders. You won t t be spending enough on them and you'll. Just introduce grief(runout). Hard to beat a collet for rigidity. You only need five. .250",.375", .500", .625" and .750". You can get every size with these five. A one inch endmill with a 3/4 shank and so on. Use that money elsewhere. I have boxes of endmills and five collets. Try to understand how a cutter cuts so you won t chase your tail if you end up with a cutter with no relief or so. Wise enough to not use it. and things can becheap and dooable to a point. A decent cutter will allow you to trust it. Keep it simple. Two flute for closed keyways and such (plunging) and aluminum. . Some four flutes for genereal milling (no plunging). Desired size for keyways in the small sizes if needed. Otherwise skip the smaller stuff. Grab a 3/8 1/2 and depending on your mill either a 3/4 or one inch. The money on all those endmill holders you saved not buying Or a full set of collets. Use it wisely and buy something with quality for your shop. And strive for quality always. It s not carpentry and you can t be half ass. It could bite you and ruin your day. A decent reputable retailer and you should be fine for general stuff. You don t have to spend crazy money at this point but buy something decent with the right tool geometry.
 
I don't know what holders, collets, etc, you have so I'll add my two cents to that topic as well. I agree with MarkM. I have two complete sets of holders but really don't use them much at all. I agree with starting with collets. I might suggest though that you look at buying a full set because you might be able to pick up a full set for the same money or less than buying individual sizes, especially when you consider the combined shipping.

There are situations where you might want certain holders. They do offer some advantages like extended reach, etc. But, you can always pick them up later if you need them or maybe even get lucky and pick them up from Craig's list if you can find a good score. That's why I have two sets... I picked up the second from Craig's list for a price I just couldn't pass up on. The were new old stock, never used, and the guy about gave them away. He was cleaning out.

Ted
 
Here's what I did. I learned how to use a vertical mill at TechShop, a defunct cooperative workspace. They had a mandatory class that you had to take before you could use the milling machine. The teacher was this old , gruff, stereotypical guy, and he gave us some very quick advice. He said that there was enough to learn without goofing around figuring out what kind of end mills to buy. The TechShop had plenty of junk Harbor Freight sets that were pretty chewed up. But, he told us that if we jump to these, or buy some cheap unknown ones on Ebay, we will never know if it was us or the cutter. Then, he handed out one 1/4" OSG end mil, new, in a tube, to each of us. Now, you will know it is you and not the cutter. Then he told us, don't expect to baby that precious little end mill because it will last about 10-20 minutes of cutting. But that will be enough for us to figure out whether to buy another one at ATS, use the shop's Harbor Freight set, or buy some more at a garage sale or on Craigslist. Great advise! By the way, the end mill was free with the class, but the teaching was very valuable.
 
Guys could someone give me example of a good collet?All post make sense but I also like the ideal that MarkM and T Ted only needing those sizes collets and end mill cutters.But I already know that I need some for cutting slots and hole for some 1/32 screws and maybe 1/4 size.Lots of good ideals in this thread and good advice.Youtube look out
 
Most of the collets I have I got with mills I bought used. Most are import. For my use, they are fine. They might run out a thousandth or so, but good enough for the stuff I do. If I need to cut something right to an exact size I'll use a smaller end mill and work my way out to the target dimension. And, smaller end mills will flex so much I don't really think the small amount of run out will influence the cutter because it will flex and cut pretty close to size.

YMMV,
Ted
 
 
Kroll said:
Guys could someone give me example of a good collet?All post make sense but I also like the ideal that MarkM and T Ted only needing those sizes collets and end mill cutters.
Click to expand...

I intially bought a set of a dozen (ER) collets, then supplemented that with 2-3 extras for the shank size of the cutters I found myself using frequently. You're going to find it's a lot less fiddly to swap out the collet (with the tool in it) than the tool itself.

You could of course skip buying the full set and just buy the appropriate collet for the shank size of the cutters that you buy. Buying collets individually is usually more expensive per-collet than buying them in a set, so you can look at a set as either "extra money wasted on a lot of collets I don't need" or "a bunch of extra collets thrown in at a discount price".

One thing to mention, if you're using a Bridgeport then you're probably talking about R8 collets, and changing those means doing the whole drawbar thing every time. You can get an ER collet chuck (ER-32 seems to be the most common) with an R8 shank, keep that tightened in with the drawbar, then change out your tooling in the ER collets. Again, less fiddly, but will cost more as you need to buy the chuck as well as the collets. So maybe keep that in mind for the future.

I don't have any opinions about "good" collets - I have heard that bad ones exist, but so far have not encountered any.
 
Technical Ted said:
Most of the collets I have I got with mills I bought used. Most are import. For my use, they are fine. They might run out a thousandth or so, but good enough for the stuff I do. If I need to cut something right to an exact size I'll use a smaller end mill and work my way out to the target dimension. And, smaller end mills will flex so much I don't really think the small amount of run out will influence the cutter because it will flex and cut pretty close to size.

YMMV,
Ted
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I have previously given this some thought and decided that a collet with a little runout will make an endmill cut slightly larger. Unless you are cutting a slot or groove with closed sides in one pass, then you would never notice anything.
True, yes, no?
 
Shootymacshootface said:
I have previously given this some thought and decided that a collet with a little runout will make an endmill cut slightly larger. Unless you are cutting a slot or groove with closed sides in one pass, then you would never notice anything.
True, yes, no?
Click to expand...


True. And most likely not cutting with all the teeth of cutter.
 
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