Annular Cutter Care?

[Whitetrash]

Even though the set of cutters coming with the Mag Drill will be less than stellar quality. What is going to be the best lube during normal operation? I'm thinking water soluble cutting oil. But, would like Input from Shade

[Shade Tree Welder]

Depends on what you are cutting.

Personally I would stay clear of water soluble. Your cutting speed is likely not
high enough for a water soluble fluid to work well.

If you are cutting steel, I would recommend a dark type thread cutting oil, if
you are cutting aluminum a cheap vegetable oil.

Clean the veg oil off before it has time to varnish on you.

[dubby]

I made a call to Shade a while back with my first experience at drilling holes in titanium. Totally not related to a mag drill, annular cutters, or anything that may be useful to you.

But, he recommended bacon grease. It has now become my go-to product when I have to drill holes in metal of any sort. It's fun to make, you get to eat the 'waste', stores well, and is easy to apply with an acid brush straight outta the shop fridge. No nasty chemical smell while using, washes off easily. You can even lick it off your fingers if necessary.

[LKeithR]

I've used annular cutters for many years. They are remarkable tools: Smooth, fast cutting, accurate and long lasting. The one thing that I've learned is that they do not need to be run fast and, like most other tools, you need to maintain a steady down pressure to keep them cutting. Letting them "dwell" definitely shortens their life.

As for cutting oil, any good oil will work but in my shop I've settled on the "new" RapidTap for steels and A9 (comes in little green bottles) for aluminum. No particular reason except that after trying many different cutting oils over the years they both seem to work well. Both seem to have slightly higher flash points than other oils I have used which means they will smoke a little less when pushed hard. Just be aware that if you're using cutting oil of any kind with an annular cutter and you're getting smoke you are running it too fast.

Annular cutters can be re-sharpened many times to really extend their useful lives. In the past I had many re-sharpened but for quite a few years now there has been nobody in the Lower Mainland of B.C. who can do them. None of the tool grinders I have found can handle the multiple angle grinds required to sharpen them...

[Matt Shade]

I bought my mag drill as a last minute grab for a machine repair and have drilled maybe a dozen 1-1/16" holes so far with the chinese bit it came with and just shooting it with PB blaster as needed.

I keep the speed as low as I can without feeling like the motor is bogging down and keep moderate pressure on it. No smoke and it peels off big continuous curls that I occasionally have to stop the spindle and remove the nest from around it.

Mine came with a coolant tank and drip line and all that and if I get to doing production work with it I will set that up but so far for the occasional hole, being lazy and spraying it with the PB blaster that was already on the bench has been sufficient. Nice thing is nothing rusts either.

[Matt Shade]

Originally Posted by dubby

I made a call to Shade a while back with my first experience at drilling holes in titanium. Totally not related to a mag drill, annular cutters, or anything that may be useful to you.

But, he recommended bacon grease. It has now become my go-to product when I have to drill holes in metal of any sort. It's fun to make, you get to eat the 'waste', stores well, and is easy to apply with an acid brush straight outta the shop fridge. No nasty chemical smell while using, washes off easily. You can even lick it off your fingers if necessary.

I'm sure Ron squared you away but my experience with Ti is that feed rate is more important than anything. It work hardens rapidly and you need to keep a depth of cut that gets below the hardened layer. Bandsaw or hacksaw requires quite a bit more down pressure than steel, and drilling is best done fairly slow with moderate pressure. Been awhile since I worked with it. Taking it to the belt grinder was the most fun, wear tinted glasses and clean the bench before you start

[JH35]

Different brand but we use this for many manual, low volume machining operations at work. If it gets to smoking, I usually say "pig roast" or something . All of the CNC machines have flood coolant.

[dubby]

Originally Posted by Matt Shade

I'm sure Ron squared you away but my experience with Ti is that feed rate is more important than anything. It work hardens rapidly and you need to keep a depth of cut that gets below the hardened layer. Bandsaw or hacksaw requires quite a bit more down pressure than steel, and drilling is best done fairly slow with moderate pressure. Been awhile since I worked with it. Taking it to the belt grinder was the most fun, wear tinted glasses and clean the bench before you start

Well, for what we were doing it wasn't too terribly complicated and the material was thin. It made nice blue ribbons and the holes were at least centered. The 'students' I had were equally thrilled about the bacon grease as a terrorist repellent. This was before the aft changed their rules and bidet gave away all our military gear .


I've always been a fan of A9 on aluminum. When I was spinning parts for fishing lure tools I spent plenty of time covered in it. I haven't had to buy a new bottle in years, but at one point was emptying one every couple months. The machine shop I got it from had some sort of other product I used for steel. It would actually come out more as a foam. I've still got a bottle of it, but the label degraded beyond legibility.

[greywynd]

I have some 3” diameter, carbide tipped annular cutters for work, trying to see if I can find anyone to sharpen them, but not having any success as of yet.

I have discovered that the high speed steel ones are easier to resharpen. However, for the particular use these are for, I can also bore them in other ways. So, someone will have to make a call at some point as to whether we get more cutters or just bore them instead.


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[toprecycler]

In past work job, I used annular cutters often with mag drill. More than once, I put a hand grind on a worn out one, to finish a job. It was several years before we realized we had a local sharpening shop that could sharpen them.

I just used a 90° air die grinder with a 2” Roloc sanding pad on it to just touch up the edges. I would try to mimic the previous angles, and just do 2-3 light passes, trying to keep the grinding even. I most always had success. Even if I had only one tooth cutting, it acted like a single tooth cutter. Just had to feed appropriately for one tooth cutting vs 5-8 cutting at once.

As a bonus, when that tooth dulled/ chipped, it would then allow other teeth to start cutting. Sometimes I would then touch up that one tooth again, and the cutter would work better the next time.

I was also told that the main reasons the cutters dull/ break is because they are not feed hard enough. They need to be pushed so the chips will break and not create long string of metal. This will keep the heat into the chip and not stay in the workpiece and cutter.

But, it was really hard to follow those instructions, and I would feed fairly easy, lifting up as needed to break the strings. I always used a pop bottle with water/ coolant mix in it to spray on cutter as needed to cool/ lubricate. Plain water was better than nothing usually.


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