Which carbide inserts should I purchase?

[MrWhoopee]

You're probably correct but they still seem to work well for my use. How do you know the ones you linked are genuine? There's lots of counterfeited stuff on amazon and price alone doesn't mean much.

What i do know is some of the sellers on ebay that i've purchased the inserts from in the past are no longer selling Korloy ones so maybe they were fakes or maybe they couldn't get hot ones to peddle any longer. The labels and the fit and finish on fakes is usually a give away and the ones i've bought don't have any of those give aways.

I don't want to derail the thread here - i've had good luck with most all of the carbide inserts but was suggesting to try out ones designed for alumnium as it leaves a very nice finish.

I have no way of knowing if the inserts listed on Amazon are genuine, they just list a price that is closer to what one would expect. I also found a listing by a NZ tooling distributor with a price of approximately $8.40 U.S. I was simply pointing out that one is unlkely to find genuine brand name inserts at such reasonable prices. If it sounds too good to be true......

I absolutely agree that the only thing that matters is how they perform. I have some "Lamina" branded SEKT inserts that came with a 2" facemill. I have no illusions about them being genuine, but they are astoundingly good, especially at $1 each. I would love to find them in other shapes.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832793513650.html

Oh, and I found those "Korloy" inserts on AE for more than what you are paying on eBay, so good find on your part.

 

[G-ManBart]

For someone starting out, I'd pretty much echo some of the previous comments with a slight modification.

You're probably going to mostly be turning and facing in the beginning. For that the holders using CCMT and DCMT will work perfectly. I'd guess you could do 90% of what you'll want in the beginning with CCMT, so if you want to spread out the $, I'd start with those.

I've also had great luck buying the inexpensive inserts off eBay. The coatings don't make much difference for hobby work so don't worry too much about that. Also, you'll find you're changing inserts a lot more frequently than you expect, so a good way to go is try something you can get in bulk, and then order a bunch of them if they work well. I've actually started buying them from the companies that ship direct from China and had some extremely impressive results. They take a couple of weeks to get here, but at $1 or less per insert, it doesn't seem to bother me.

As mentioned, many of the "name brand" inserts on eBay are counterfeit so I'd be careful buying expensive inserts there. There are a number of eBay vendors who buy inserts in bulk from auctions where companies close, and those are a pretty safe bet to be legit and quite a bit less than new retail.

I'd also echo having some of the aluminum-specific inserts as they do a fantastic job on steel for light finish cuts. The lettering is slightly different, but they work in the same holder.

For inserts like this, the last digit is the tip radius, so a .50 is a smaller radius than a .51 (1/128th versus 1/64th). The smaller radius allows you to take a lighter cut, and is often helpful for aluminum where a sharper edge is important. The .50 will allow you to take a very light skim pass on steel and get a really nice finish. Shockingly, they also work quite well on harder steel alloys.

CCMT 21.51
CCGT/CCGX 21.50 and 21.51 (aluminum-specific, same holder as CCMT)
DCMT 21.51
DCGX 21.50 and 21.51 (aluminum-specific, same holder as DCMT)

If you look at some of the imported inserts they use the metric number convention, so they look slightly different. Some will list both sets of numbers, but not always.

CCMT 060204
CCGT/CCGX 060202 and 060204
DCMT 070204
DCGX 070202 and 070204