Shars Carbide Tipped Tools Bits - Comments & Reviews

The brazed carbide lathe tools are rubbish.

Pretty strong position to take, Baron, and I suspect you might get some push back on this one. There are guys who love these brazed lathe tools and they have been used quite effectively on lathes as small as little Sherlines to large industrial lathes. They are cheap to buy, easy to condition and hone and will get you cutting very quickly, which is what I suspect David is trying to do. Moreover, they will cut effectively at speeds slower than inserted carbide provided the edges are sharp and they finish quite well if you put a small nose radius on them, too.

Brazed tools are not ideal, not by a long shot, but if I were in David's shoes I would be doing exactly what he is doing.
 
If time is the issue and you have a nice grinder available, just grinding up a bunch of HSS square tools is pretty fast. Maybe make the students hone them.. And maybe you can include "The Book of Mikey" with the bits and diamond hones.

Could also have them hone the brazed carbide I suppose.
 
David, I had a quick look at the Shar's set and I don't think I would go for that one. There are a few types of tools that you will actually use and this one is cheap and has multiple copies of the ones you will use most often: https://allindustrial.com/all-indus...ipped-lathe-tool-bit-set-brazed-single-point/

A few sets will supply multiple guys for not much money.
I have that set, and it is quite adequate. But like most imports you will probably have to grind back the (mild) steel shank supporting the carbide in order to provide relief for the carbide. You will also have to take a green wheel to the carbide to get the angles, then hone with a diamond wheel.

Like most folks, I use HSS, carbide inserts, and brazed carbide bits. They all work, in my opinion.

However, what I would definitely stay away from are the carbide tipped boring bars that SHARS sells. Those are not good.
 
Pretty strong position to take, Baron, and I suspect you might get some push back on this one. There are guys who love these brazed lathe tools and they have been used quite effectively on lathes as small as little Sherlines to large industrial lathes. They are cheap to buy, easy to condition and hone and will get you cutting very quickly, which is what I suspect David is trying to do. Moreover, they will cut effectively at speeds slower than inserted carbide provided the edges are sharp and they finish quite well if you put a small nose radius on them, too.

Brazed tools are not ideal, not by a long shot, but if I were in David's shoes I would be doing exactly what he is doing.


Here is the pushback ....... Micro 100 brazed carbide tools are ready to use out of the box, are not very expensive when compared to quality M42 bits and are tough enough carbide to handle modest mistakes and interrupted cuts. The cheap o brazed carbide tools that come from Asia can be used if one is careful and makes no mistakes. The mistake I see newbies make most often with carbide is to periodically dribble oil or coolant on the tool when in use thinking this is helpful. It most certainly is not and the temperature shock of cooling a hot bit will often fracture the bit very quickly. my rule for carbide is if you can not flood, or continuously mist it, or run continuous air then run dry and take lighter cuts with quicker feed to keep temps down.

I use Micro 100 bits on all 3 of my lathes, a flimsy little China machine that gets rare use, my Taiwanese 1640 and a 10EE , no problem running it on any of em. I will go so far as to say if you have not run Micro 100 bits you don't know what brazed carbide is capable of, its that dramatic. For sharpening I use a diamond hone, if it is really buggered I use a green wheel and then hone, no spendy tooling required.
 
+1 for Micro 100 bits - tough as hell, stay sharp for a very long time and will cut almost anything. Not nearly as fragile as typical brazed bits, either. All my current brazed bits are from Micro 100, too.
 
Yup, we got "The Book of Mikey"! Now you're going to have to do something else amazing!

Yeah, I'm not likely to repeat that one. I wish Chris Poulsen stuck around - he was a brazed carbide guy that would have put this whole thing to rest.
 
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