Solid Carbide Endmill - Types and Usages in Details
What are carbide Cutters?
A Carbide cutters is made from a rod of tungsten carbide. (Rod are made of raw tungsten with cobalt) A raw carbide rod are grinded in CNC Machine to give a desired shape or type with different application and usages majorly Flat and Round.
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Above left part of image (1) is of a carbide rod and right part is of uncoated carbide flat endmill 3 flute made by grinding machine. Usually all carbide cutters are coated with different coating system to increase wear resistance durability and performance.
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Types of Cutters
Flat Endmill
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Flat end mills are those which are flat on top make a 90 degree angle on top it can be 2,3,4 and 6 flutes meanwhile 4 flutes are most common used in the industry. 2 flutes are used for roughing purpose on soft material and 3 flute also used on soft material like non ferrous for semi finishing and easy evacuation of chips.
Flat end mills are mainly used for Face milling , slotting ,Plunging, shoulder milling , pocketing any 90 degree profile in component or die mould , they are mostly used for finishing purpose in facing and side milling operations. (Endmills can not be used for drill operation)
Ball Nose Endmill
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As name suggest these are like balls on top they are a full radius of end mill like 12 mm ballnose end mill have radius of 6 mm , these are used on 3d milling pocketing or same radius copying on component or finishing purpose. . (Ballnose can not be used for drill operation)
Corner Radius Endmill
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Corner Radius endmill are very similar to square (flat) endmill with corners on the edges , they are very useful to decrease cutting force distribution evenly and capable to take more shock to it , it’s used for radius on the corners as per required usually this radius comes in 0.5 ,1,1.5,2,2.5,3 mm as per size .
Rougher Endmill
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Roughing endmills as name suggest used for heavy cutting stage with roughness used when second operation need to be done for finishing , low vibration
2nd use of rougher comes when doing operation there chip evacuation is difficult like in a drill hole design of rougher endmill break chips into very tiny pcs which easily get evacuated from hole.
Long Neck Endmill
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Long neck square endmills and ballnose are only reduce shank body to get into deeper operation cutting flute length remain same so it does not mean it will increase side cutting .
Three Flute Endmills
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3 Flute endmill are used on soft material like aluminium, brass ,silver , copper etc.
You need less flutes for soft material , above picture is DLC coated which increases wear resistance of cutter even without DLC coated are used in same way.
WHAT ARE FLUTES AND THEIR USAGES. 1, 2, 3,4,5,6
The more the flutes less the load on each tooth hence improved surface finish for finishing operations. More the flutes need more feed to run it and less rpm to increase its life.
1 flute also called single flute carbide endmills are used for soft material like plastic, acrylic, wood and aluminum in routers for engraving work . it allows high volume of material removal
2 flutes are common to use on steel stainless steel cast iron non ferrous material for semi finish operations. Flutes have more space for chip evacuation
3 flutes can be used with both kind of material ferrous and non ferrous.
4 flutes are most common used in the industry for steel, stainless steel and cast iron materials. It allows faster feed on machine and fine finishing chip removal is not as smooth as in less flutes cutters.
5 flutes or above is mainly used for finer finish and not used in the industry common, these are very expensive and chip evacuation is also problem with them if the size is too big that is fine to go for higher flutes.
Coatings
Coating is a very thin layer of different material and it increase resistance to wear, heat and hardness of the cutter. Different coating have different advantages but coating is not the only parameters of cutter’s quality will write more details of carbide coating in next article