Poll - Who Makes the best end mills?

Who Makes The Best End Mills?

  • Total voters
    36
A problem when buying cheap Asian end mills is that some are quite sharp and some are not when brand new. Also,the HSS bits seem to be a good deal more brittle than USA HSS. The coatings can be extremely thin also. You buy them at your own risk. As with everything Asian,quality control is iffy. Most of the time for home shop use,they'll be o.k.,though a brand new cutter that isn't quite sharp is not the best tool to have.
 
eac67gt said:
The question is - who makes the best end mills?
Click to expand...

Are we roughing or finishing? What's the material? Finish requirements?

Roughing endmills I like OSG and Hertel. Stainless and difficult to machine materials I use fine tooth roughers. Aluminum cutting endmills have polished flutes to reduce the chance for the aluminum sticking to the flutes.

Proper surface footage is just as important as the endmill selection.
 
The one's I use are not on the list. Nachi, Cleveland, Morse, Quency. Most of mine are new old stock, regrinds from over twenty years ago.
 
I want to thank everyone so far for their input. Even though this poll was on a kind of simple subject and to some maybe kind of useless I still think it is fun to run polls. Polls are simple way to start a general subject and see what people are thinking or doing. Personally I don't mind starting other polls in the future I just need to come up with ideas on what to make a poll about (I'm kind of slow :think1:).

If anyone has ideas on a poll or constructive criticism, please let me know.

Thanks again everyone and have a great day!

Ed
 
I like and use Guhring.
Niagra is also a good end mill manufacturer, which I also have.
Haven't tried them all, but Guhring makes great tooling.
All of my carbide is Guhring.
 
I have a friend who gets large lots of M42 Chinese endmills. I have no idea where or who they come from but they are great and smoke what Enco and others sell as economojo end mills. If I need a size he doesn't have I go to the local machine supply place and buy YG. YG taps and EMs are consistently good but you gots to pay the price.

I fondly remember the days when Enco sold no name USA made drills and end mills and even no name Chinese M42 tooling at good prices, seems those days are over. Now it junk made out of hardened peanut butter or over price inferior stuff with old school names attached. I just returned a lathe toolholder from Kennemetal, grossly over priced, made in Bulgaria, beautiful job, nice cnc work, except some idiot never noticed the screw hole for insert was off center by about .010". Some days.....

michael
 
I like Niagara, Weldon, and ITW (Illinois Tool Works.) If I had to pick a single brand it would be ITW.
 
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