Regrinding carbide inserts

[Wheat.Millington]

I wonder if you would indulge me by telling me what kind of cuts your lathe can take. How deep can you rough and how fine a cut is your lathe capable of making with your current tooling?

I'll give you a ferinstance. My Sherline lathe (35# soaking wet with a 0.08HP motor), using HSS tools, can take a 0.050-0.060" deep roughing cut in mild steel (0.100-0.120" off the diameter) and a 0.100" deep cut in aluminum (0.200" off the diameter). In both kinds of material, it will directly cut 0.0001 - 0.0002" in a finishing cut.

As a beginner the cuts I have been taking are less than you've expressed here, not yet daring to take more than 1mm (0.040") cuts into steel. The machine is clearly capable of doing more but I haven't pushed it yet - maybe I'll do some experimenting this weekend on film if you like?

 

[mikey]

Nah, it's okay. Maybe we'll just take this offline.

 

[Larry$]

If you haven't yet, take a look @ Stefan Gotteswinter's videos about turning. An excellent suggestion was about depth of cut. He runs a relatively small lathe. If he has ,018 remaining he takes it off in two or 3 equal passes. The advantages over taking the last cut as a very thin (sneak-up) pass: the cut is deep enough that the tool will stay engaged w/o alternating between cutting and burnishing, a big enough chip is being removed to take away the heat in the chip instead of adding most of it to the work, you can more reliably dial in a .006 cut than a .001.

 

[Alcap]

I’ve touched up my cheap inserts for my bench lathe . Mostly for those times that the material that was very hard and worn the tip off quickly on rusty or outer part of cast iron , things like that .

 

[MrWhoopee]

I'm another fan of cheap inserts. They may not be as durable as the name brands, but at $1.00 each I don't care. They cut metal and hold up reasonably well considering what I do to them. In a hobby situation, you are much more likely to damage the insert than wear it out. Things like stalling the machine in the cut will take out any insert, regardless of quality or cost.

 

[Larry42]

cut as nice and square as this metal devil that uses a carbide tip saw blade

Things like stalling the machine in the cut will take out any insert

Ouch! I've never stalled my lathe in the cut. I did stall my mill one time, due to the work coming lose. Didn't hurt the mill but trashed the work.