Strange Acting Fastenal Carbide End Mills

Buffalo21

Buffalo21

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A while back I bought a bucket of end mills, at a yogurt plant that was closing, in the bucket there was a bag of new carbide end mills, sourced from Fastenal. They were in plastic tubes, with only a Fastenal label, size and that they were uncoated carbide.

On numerous occasions, I’ve tried them on all kinds of material, under many different circumstances, with many different feeds and speeds, with very poor results, they seem to smear metal and not really cut worth a crap. I did find one purpose, that they excel at, they cut the AXA tool blocks from CDCO, like butter. I have opened many of the blocks (250+) to hold 5/8” and 3/4” tooling. They leave a mirror like finish , cut like the devil, last forever and no smoke, sparks or funky fumes.

I have no idea, why a end mill would work so badly in almost all applications, yet excel, in the cutting of hardened tool blocks. I find this very strange. This morning I put a end mill that’s done probably 75+ blocks, in the past, and today cut like a brand new end mill. I ran the 1/2” end mill at about 1200 rpms, taking a .060” wide cut, with a .050” DOC running the table, basically as fast as I could and not a whimper from the end mill or the mill
 
I have not tried the fastenal tooling, but it looks like i'll need to take a closer look!
 
We have used fastenal tooling in our plant. Expensive like good tooling, but poor results. I stay away in my prototype shop. Not sure what the problem is, but it doesn’t last, cut well, or anything expected. Just our experience and my opinion.
 
UD,

To me Fastenal is like Graingers, convenient but sure as hell not cheap. Contractors like them, they offer many industrial supples and they deliver to the job site. When it comes to cutting tools, they always offer good-better-best, with high pricing to match. I have found their generic products like drill bits to be marginal, one step above total junk, their policy to deliver makes them popular to companies, to me it like a bakery delivering 2 day old bread, maybe eatable, but hardly the best tasting. In my work, they are ranked at the bottom of the supply chain, if all else fails, I go to Fastenal.

My OP was more of a remark on an end mill, that can’t seem to cut steel or aluminum, worth a crap, but cuts hardened steel tool blocks, with very acceptable results,
 
Buffalo21 said:
My OP was more of a remark on an end mill, that can’t seem to cut steel or aluminum, worth a crap, but cuts hardened steel tool blocks, with very acceptable results,
Click to expand...
Maybe if you posted some close-up pictures of the business end of one of these cutters, someone might offer a better theory why these cutters only seem to work on hard material.

Craig
 
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