the best profilometer numbers you have seen with carbide

[Harbinger]

jdeleon-

You will experience built up edge (BUE) when using CBN to mill aluminum. If you must use CBN for aluminum due to the additional milling of ferrous seat materials, you will want to use a lubricant of some kind. I recommend a light coat of moly-dee tapping fluid.
The real problems come in trying to use PCD on ferrous metals, as the carbon atoms in the diamond will dissolve into the iron, eroding away the cutting edge in short order. If you have an aluminum cylinder head with copper seats then PCD will work well and it would be my cutting material of choice.

Motorman-

A replacement insert for that cutter would look something like this, SPMN 533. "S" for square, "P" for 11º positive, "M" for m-class tolerance and "N" for no-hole. The numbers "533" tell us that "5" is a .625 inscribed circle insert, "3" is insert thickness of .125 (or "4" if yours is 3/16 thick) and the last "3" is the radius.
Guess what I'm trying to say in all of this is that you have enough information to find an insert of any brand using the ISO system.

Best of luck.

[Wolfplace]

jdeleon-

You will experience built up edge (BUE) when using CBN to mill aluminum. If you must use CBN for aluminum due to the additional milling of ferrous seat materials, you will want to use a lubricant of some kind. I recommend a light coat of moly-dee tapping fluid.
The real problems come in trying to use PCD on ferrous metals, as the carbon atoms in the diamond will dissolve into the iron, eroding away the cutting edge in short order. If you have an aluminum cylinder head with copper seats then PCD will work well and it would be my cutting material of choice.

Motorman-

A replacement insert for that cutter would look something like this, SPMN 533. "S" for square, "P" for 11º positive, "M" for m-class tolerance and "N" for no-hole. The numbers "533" tell us that "5" is a .625 inscribed circle insert, "3" is insert thickness of .125 (or "4" if yours is 3/16 thick) and the last "3" is the radius.
Guess what I'm trying to say in all of this is that you have enough information to find an insert of any brand using the ISO system.

Best of luck.

I believe the second number is in 1/16" increments or 2 for 1/8/ 3 for 3/16 etc.

[jdeleon]

Harbinger,
Thanks, I'll give it a try.
The Water soluable coolant I've found to work well when cutting aluminum(have been using for over eight years now) is 'Rustlick 50/50'
I tried to find lube info for CBN a few years back from the Valenite people,... no help.
Again thanks,

[Harbinger]

I believe the second number is in 1/16" increments or 2 for 1/8/ 3 for 3/16 etc.

The ISO thickness code has no incremental rhyme or reason as far as I can tell. It jumps from 1/32 to 1/16 increments and has variations in between. In the ANSI system, inserts all follow a 1/16 increment on the thickness and 1/64 on the radius but ISO is a little more confusing.

"3", as you mentioned is 1/8 thickness. Yet T3, which a number of our cutters use, is 5/32. Falling out of the 1/16 incremental pattern is "2", which is 3/32. Just 1/32 thinner than "3".

Can be a real pain in the arse to keep up with, so to eliminate the confusion, I keep a "Shop Tooling" binder with print-outs of all our inventory in cutters from the manufacturer's catalogs, along with their respective insert codes.

jdeleon,

If you have something you like then by all means, stay with it.

Another cutting fluid I'd recommend to anyone for milling aluminum is Tap Magic (the type "for aluminum"). It has an odor, but you will only need a bare minimum. Just a very light coat. Aluminum will not stick to a tool with tap magic on it. I use it anytime I need to mill aluminum on a manual or open type machine with no guarding around it. Fairly clean stuff and a little bit goes a long ways.

As for CBN, I use to work as a sales rep for Iscar, which now owns Ingersoll and a number of other companies in the cutting tool world. I'd say that 90% of the work I prescribed CBN for was in turning heat treated steels and alloys 55 HRC and better. CBN has a very low affinity to iron, so it finishes superbly. Coolant can be used, but if the cutting is interrupted and/or heavy, I would suggest dry cutting. Coolant isn't necessary but I have always had a difficult time convincing people of this. In my experience, you will see 25% or better insert life, depending on the cutting conditions, without coolant.

If you must use something, then use a cold air gun like those from Vortec or ExAir.

Mitsubishi has a few videos on their website showing CBN hard-turning in action, along with some wiper insert turning.

http://www.mitsubishicarbide.com/mmus/e ... /index.htm#

Scroll down to the bottom and click MBC010 and MB8025.