Question: Parting Blade Thickness

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BadDog
Posts: 5131
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 8:21 pm
Location: Phoenix, AZ

Re: Question: Parting Blade Thickness

Post by BadDog »

Nobody said to buy at retail. 8) Those prices are silly.

I was so stunned with the shear pleasure of running that the first time that I bought a brand new blade and (I think 10) inserts for $100, and made my own primitive holder (it worked). This was bought from my buddy, which as I indicated, buys/sells a lot of tooling, so he had maybe 10 of these new, and let me have it for basically what he had in it. So, a friend deal...

At first I was always paranoid about breaking out the little support piece under the insert, pretty much THE one and only failure mode. About the only way to damage it is to let the insert get dull, or maybe hit an interrupted cut or inclusion. You do have 2 of them, but I didn't want to have to spend that much again, so I started watching auctions (mostly ebay). Over time I found 2 more blades, including one with a really nice commercial adapter to hold the blade in a normal Aloris tool block. I think I may have $50 in the one with the holder with barely used blade (just some chip "swipes" knocking off coating), and the other new in box blade was maybe $30. But those were the low end outliers, certainly not the price you get most of the time. Most of my blades are 1", but during that time I found a 1.25" (IIRC?) using the same inserts that allows deeper parting cuts. Those may be available cheaper?

They also make generic versions of that blade that take the Sandvik inserts (and there is another maker of matching inserts I can't recall) as well as similar inserts. Those are a LOT less pricey. But I've still got sandvik inserts (they last a long time with my usage), so I stuck with sandvik.
Russ
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whateg0
Posts: 1114
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:54 pm
Location: Wichita, KS

Re: Question: Parting Blade Thickness

Post by whateg0 »

I finally ordered carbide parting blades after finding that some material I was trying to put a groove in is harder than the HSS parting blade I was trying to use. Ordered 1.5mm and 2mm sets. I didn't see the 1.5mm until after I had ordered the 2mm or else I would probably have only ordered one set.

Dave
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