Machining Aluminum With Carbide Inserts

For aluminum (and even skim passes on steel) you want the polished, razor sharp silver inserts. With those I can pull a continuous chip off 7075 at .00015 DOC. Looks and feels like fuzz. :)
 
o_O Holy crap, Bill!!! I knew I had much to learn, but I can't even imagine a cut that fine on my lathe with ANY cutting tool! .00015 depth of cut is AMAZING to me!
 
What you want is a polished insert, like a CCGX 32.51 LH Y0101. Silver color, sharp angle, 2 edges. Try Little Machine Shop. And adjust the nose radius and style as needed.

No, the gold colored ones won't do as well. They're for steel, more or less. As noted by others, if you use the right insert at the right speed you'll get a finish that'l frost your eyeballs.
 
Subwayrocket said:
Like chips&more said , the cutting oil i'm using above is just a mixture of what i had lying around . It's about half Rotella and other opened oil quarts , 1/4 walmart ATF , 1/4 chainsaw bar oil all combined in a gallon jug and thinned out a little with deisel . Seems to be working fine for steels and Alum so far .
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One of the best fluids for aluminum is kerosene, I would not use it myself, I work in a machine shop and only use water soluble coolant on aluminum which we buy in 55 gallon drums unmixed. Messy yet not as nasty as kerosene. In 25 years I have also never seen a soluble water based coolant ignite.

Do not use it on magnesium however.
 
Acculube works wonderful in MQL application/ near dry just enough to prevent adhesion. If you had a fog buster i bet it would work great in it. We use it on our cold saws chopping aluminum extrusions all day long and get a nice rainbow finish on the ends with no deburring or sticky mess.
 
Randall Marx said:
o_O Holy crap, Bill!!! I knew I had much to learn, but I can't even imagine a cut that fine on my lathe with ANY cutting tool! .00015 depth of cut is AMAZING to me!
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I typically do that when I want to get a really super good fit, or I'm checking alignment on the lathe. Because my lathe reads diameter, I simply dial in .0003 on the DRO and go. Honestly, I was just as surprised as you when I did it the first time. :)
 
On aluminum, I use Relton A-9 cutting fluid. Insets wise, I've been using Korloy's AK chip breaker model, they are highly polished with a lot of positive rake at the cutting edge.
 
I too use A-9 and have been very happy with the results.
 
I use the triangle gold carbides for rough work, and change to hand dressed HHS's for finish work.
 
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