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Definitely hard, 50s era anvil (reddthat.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/machinist@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 6 points 8 months ago (9 children)

How much does a job like that run at retail walk-in rate?

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 8 months ago

    Well this was a personal project at a shop I work at, so I don't have any pricing knowledge really. I did burn up several sides to the inserts I used, so that's like $60 in tools, took about an hour of messing around with it. I bet a shop with more experience with hard metal and big stuff would charge you $100-200 to face it, depends on shop rate and stuff.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    If it's hardened, you'll want carbide tooling, which can be spendy if you break it. A shell/face mill like was used here works great.

    Personally, I probably would have tried to fly cut this with a carbide tool for that extra fancy surface finish!

    I would charge $75 or so to do this if I like you. But I only machine as a hobby, and have no idea of going rates for walk-ins.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    Carbide is acceptable and will get the job done, but youre going to burn up a lot of inserts getting it dialed in.

    Ceramic, on the other hand, is purpose designed for cutting hardened materials.

    I was tearing my hair out trying to turn a hardened 4140 piece in my lathe even running carbide. Then I picked up some ceramic inserts and it was like night and day. Immediate and dramatic improvement in surface finish and tool life.

    We have a face mill that takes the same style carbide (although smaller size) that my lathe tool does and I'm very interested to see how that runs with ceramic.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    Tungsten and boron carbide should be much harder than any ceramic, though I have had similar experiences with carbide drill bits. I wonder what exactly "carbide" actually means sometimes.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Most carbide I've run into is usually around 65HRC. The ceramic is have in my lathe right now is 95HRC. Its a significant difference. Its brittle, so it doesn't like interrupted cuts, but it loves heat and speed that would cook carbide in seconds.

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