How often are you going to be using it? Not very often if you work at home with it and aren't doing heavy milling. For business, I'd go with the premium USA brand, especially for CNC use day in and day out. Bob
not very often but out of all my tools I expect this one to be used the most. Most of the milling operations I find myself needing to accomplish are facing. I think I'll just splurge on the Israeli made one. Not cheap china **** and not the $$ of the USA.
Thank you MR.bohica. Some of the advice was a little tough to swallow. Please take Mr.bohicas' advice. I guarantee that you won't fail. In any commercial shop with a good reputation would never allow those single point flycutters in any Bridgeport type mills. Its a perfect way to ruin bearings and such not to mention a free p*** to the unemployment line!
Here is what I use to tram my Bridgeport heads. Made of a pc. of 5/16" round. This Interrapid indicator is as good as you are going to buy. In my opinion it beats the Starrett last word to death. JC
We made ours. 4" round stock turned to roughly 3.5 dia.about 6" long then turned half of that down to .75. Then a slot was milled to hold inserted tool bar. Then 3 holes drilled and tapped for set screws. We used it for many years. I do not have it now and cannot provide exact dimensions.
This is exactly what I do, except with 1/4" rod. I go with the Last Word since I got a good deal on a bunch of them a while ago. Bob
I should make a drawing from mine and post it here. 3/4" shank, takes a 3/8" tool blank. The angle on it is 20*, I remember that much about it. Bob
Yeah, nobody likes that bit of truth. They want to beat the **** out of a spindle. Even the guy that ran one "all the time" failed to understand that it was on one machine that was relegated to squaring up stock. I recall an old guy throwing a hammer at a clown who put a fly cutter in his M head Bridgeport. Just like cheap digital cameras made everybody a photographer, the mountain of cheap chinese machine tools has made everyone a Machinist. And the 100v wire welders... B.
Not trying to be a ***hole, but the cost of replacing the bearings and maybe a spindle or even the head on my Bridgeport's every 5 - 10 years or so is nothing compared to the money they make in that amount of time. I will be the first to admit I don't baby sit my equipment, I use it, but at the end of the year the repair bill compared to the bottom line are no comparison. **notice, this is just my opinion** JC
You are fooling yourself if you believe a single point cutter is making you money. Unless you have a shop full of people that will work for a bowl of rice per day, the wasted hours are an even bigger cost than the beating the machine takes. Again. No commercial operation uses a single point fly cutter to make money. 3, 4 or 6 cutting edges translate into a much higher feed rate. More parts per day. Very simple. For light surfacing cuts, the cheap Shars stuff is just fine. They use an insert with a high positive rake that shears the surface clean. A 2" diameter 4 insert shell mill can be had for 75 bucks. Using the round inserts is about as cheap as you can get - they can be indexed 10 degrees for a new cutting edge. Spin it up to the max spindle speed in aluminum. Use a little lube - Kerosene/Diesel/WD40/PBblaster/Cheap spray oil... and feed .005 per tooth. B.
The fly cutter is only one of many pcs. of tooling that is used on a Bridgeport. I didn't say I use a fly cutter on everything. If you will remember, this thread was started by a man wanting info on flycutting. JC
This thread sure deteriorated into ****... flycutters have their place, just another way of doing something, sometimes they are handy in a pinch. They are not meant for removing large amounts of material, nobody with any experience tries that one. For a wide one-p*** skim cut, they are hard to beat. Bob
I agree with Bob. The flycutter is a perfect tool for dusting off wide surfaces. Not made for deep cuts. Even a light weight machine like a Series-1 Universal Knee Bridgeport can safely swing 8" or 10" in diameter if you're only taking a few thou on each p***. Here is a cutter I made out of 5" diameter 4340 round stock. I used socket head cap screws instead of regular set screws so I could really bear down on the bit. I counter bored the bolt holes to receive the heads. Making your flycutter as heavy and solid as practical helps to keep things from ringing, greatly improving finish: I recently used it to dust off the faces of a torque plate I'm making for my Early Hemi Engine project: You can't see it in this image, but the finish is quite good considering the width of cut: I'll still dust the faces with the surface grinder when I finish putting all the holes in the plate. But that's only because I'm a perfectionist. David
When you guys tram the head instead of dragging the indicator across the slots lay a dowel pin (usually one of the 5/8" ones laying around) on the table and slide it under the indicator to get your reading. Swing the indicator 90° and take another reading by sliding the pin under the indicator again. This way the indicator doesn't take a beating going around the table. I've worked with some pretty beat up tables. If it doesn't make sense I'll get a pic when I get home. J. Clear
Here is a adjustable fly cutter I made 20 years ago. It has surfaced many a pc. of aluminum plate. JC
+1 on the Inetrapid indicator, also I like the Brown & Sharpe Best Test. I use a long true parallel to tram the BP table. Don't bring the indicator up too far, I only go a few .001 and then sweep. that way it don't bang over irregularities. Ago
Mr. J.Clear has offered good advice as well. Any gauge block will work too if you don't have a ground pin. This certainly saves any chance of ruining a expensive indicator. But on the other hand why bother if we are going to put an unbalanced, bearing beater, single pointed flycutter in our good Bridgeport. LOL
It mite be good for someone to start a Milling machine / Lathe tooling thread. Not to criticize each other, but to show different ideas and tooling and setups. JC
I don't believe anyones intent was to be critical. There is a machinist group on the Hamb and has some extremely talented craftsmen on there as well. What I will never understand is the fact that some people wish to "do it my way" and or "I've done it this way before" and refuse very constructive advice from those who made a lifelong commitment to a trade or vocation such as tool making,die building, mold making or straight up machining. Heck, I could flatten this blower case top and bottom with a piece of ground plate, some highspot blueing and a dull discarded file. All this because I listed to an German craftsman 25 years ago and was eager to learn. Trust me, I will be listening to the experienced when I tackle my Hemi!
I know exactly what you mean about surfacing it with a plate and a file. When we ran fuel in the 80's we where low buck to say the least. We used the old style 16 bolt blower manifolds and they where terrible for being warped on top. So I took a old iron surface plate about 12" X 18" and ground it nice and flat. We would take a couple of those adhesive backed disks for a disk grinder about 12" dia. and stick them on and surface it down close enough to use a s****er and straight edge to get them on the money. The whole morel of this story and this thread for that mater is you can do a job a lot of different ways and still come out with good results if you take your time. JC
I appreciate everyone's input. As more of a "do-all" tool I did buy that shell mill. I'm hoping with the correct selection of inserts I can machine what I need to with good results. Will it be the "best" way? Prob not. Someone always has a better way. I can't afford to buy 10 tools that all are really good at one thing and terrible at everything else. So I went for the "jack of all trades, master of none" approach. The fact that there is 1001 ways to do a task makes the answer of best way to machine anything clear as mud.
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