Sharpening Horizontal Mill Cutters

[wlburton]

I originally posted this as a question in the "What I Bought Today" subforum to a member who had bought what looked like some used cutters for a horizontal mill. Another member suggested that I post in the "Beginner's" subforum, so here it is:

I have quite a few cutters of various kinds that came with my Atlas mill and, as a beginner, I have a couple of questions that I hope you might be able to answer, since it looks like you may be buying used cutters. I believe mine are all used, and my first question is: how can I determine if they need to be sharpened? All the ones I've tried do cut metal, but I don't have enough experience to know if they're cutting as well as they should. A few have chipped teeth and I've discarded them, but most look pretty good. The second question follows from the first: where can you get cutters like this sharpened, and is it cost effective to do so? If you or anyone else have input on this I would appreciate it.

Bill Burton

 

[Billh50]

If you don't have the right equipment for sharpening then send them out. Look in the phonebook for sharpening services or just go to a local shop and ask where they send theirs.

 

[Karl_T]

My two cents:

These are cheap on ebay if you are patient and buy in quantity. Much less than re sharp costs

 

[Bob Korves]

A few have chipped teeth and I've discarded them, but most look pretty good.

Chipped teeth do not necessarily make cutters worthless. If it is just the corner of one tooth, you might hear it in the cutting but not see it in the finished work. As long as a cutter is sharp, it will cut, and a low area on the cutter just means that the next tooth has to cut more metal. For that reason, use reduced feeds with damaged but sharp tooling, or there will soon be more damage...