- Joined
- Jul 6, 2022
- Messages
- 171
You wouldn't believe it but I was walking around and someone decided to throw out a perfectly good microscope. All it needed was to have its eyepiece and objectives cleaned and it worked fine.
But since it's a microscope for biological use, it's not really suited for looking at surfaces, so what I did was hold a flashlight onto the cutting tool while looking in the eyepiece. Unfortunately no photos because the flashlight happens to be my phone... I used to have a trick of taking photos from microscopes by sticking a cell phone camera into the eyepiece when I was in college.
Anyways it was eye opening. I could see carbide inserts are NOT completely sharp, even "sharp" ones have rounded cutting edge. Only aluminum inserts have a somewhat of a sharp cutting edge. Furthermore it's very easy to spot edge wear.... you couldn't see it with the naked eyes. Great tool to have if I am shopping at the used insert stores (can quickly reject the badly worn ones).
It makes me wonder about getting good surface finish with say HSS blanks because those are completely sharp when you grind them, but from looking at carbide inserts they are not actually completely sharp. But then there's no way for me to machine in that roundness either.
But since it's a microscope for biological use, it's not really suited for looking at surfaces, so what I did was hold a flashlight onto the cutting tool while looking in the eyepiece. Unfortunately no photos because the flashlight happens to be my phone... I used to have a trick of taking photos from microscopes by sticking a cell phone camera into the eyepiece when I was in college.
Anyways it was eye opening. I could see carbide inserts are NOT completely sharp, even "sharp" ones have rounded cutting edge. Only aluminum inserts have a somewhat of a sharp cutting edge. Furthermore it's very easy to spot edge wear.... you couldn't see it with the naked eyes. Great tool to have if I am shopping at the used insert stores (can quickly reject the badly worn ones).
It makes me wonder about getting good surface finish with say HSS blanks because those are completely sharp when you grind them, but from looking at carbide inserts they are not actually completely sharp. But then there's no way for me to machine in that roundness either.