I’ll soon be ready to do my first cutting with my Shapeoko and I’ve started to think about where to get cutters from when you live in Europe. I’ve read a few threads on this forum and looked at the wiki and from what I can see you basically have these options:
Where you able to find a distributor in Europe through their site? From what I can see on their site - https://www.harveytool.com/find-a-distributor - you can only search for distributors in the U.S. and Canada. For distributors outside of the U.S. and Canada they’re writing “Customers outside the U.S. and Canada can contact us directly.”.
I just looked at their catalog. It seems very descriptive, but it also seems like it’s from 2011 and quite incomplete compared to their website?
I also don’t understand why they make their cutters in the US standard (imperial units) when they’re a European company? Is inches more of a standard when it comes to cutters?
+1 for finding local distributors. I started looking around Europe for distributors but most of the best tools I’ve ended up buying have come from local distributors who distribute tools from larger manufacturers like Sumitomo, Hartner, Nachi, Janpo etc.
They can be hard to find though for sure. I had a look for Hartner distributors and it looks like their distributor in Denmark is the same Kyocera bunch that you found.
Aside from finding local distributors, I’d recommend:
Sorotec: Their store-brand endmills are really good, especially for the price they sell them for.
Cncfraises: Soooooo cheap but again, the endmills are really good. The shipping is also much cheaper than Sorotec IIRC. The guy who runs the store is also super helpful and responsive to email.
With endmills I’ve been fairly lucky; every distributor I’ve contacted in Switzerland has been happy to sell to me. Some of them have nice web stores that accept private customers, some of them prefer that I write them an email but all of them have taken my money. This is a small country though and I get the impression that these are relatively small businesses, I’m not sure how it works in Denmark.
Regarding metric vs. Imperial, I try to stick to metric but collets are cheap and it’s not hard to tell CAM the endmill radius so I just use both.
@holgersindbaek: this is my local supplier, and I have been very pleased with every single tool I bought there (about 20 of them by now). If you ever choose to order there and need help translating French let me know.
hi,
same for me, cncfraise is always serious and helpful. good quality, absolutely right price. i love it. and super fast delivery. it even packs up on weekends
I’m planning to cut mainly in wood to start off with but would like to cut aluminum and brass in the future as well. If you were to create a starter kit from CNCFraises, how would it look? Any suggestions?
Do you know if any of the collets on the site will work in my Makita? It seems like most of the cutters on the site are metric. The only US cutters they have seem to be 1/8" cutters. Why is that?
For non-ferrous metals on the Nomad, I like the single-flute EVO endmills. I’d grab the 3mm endmills in each of the available lengths, probably 1 or 2 per piece. You could go up to the higher flute-count endmills like these but I’d recommend starting with single-flute because it’s so much harder to clog them with material. That was a huge problem for me when I was starting off and my life was immeasurably easier when I started using single-flute endmills.
For wood, someone else would know better but I’d guess these or these.
You can of course email him (email is in the website footer) and he’ll be able to give you some recommendations too. He’s also made a couple of packs himself.
Doesn’t look like it. @WillAdams has recommended these guys for Makita collets in the past. It appears they do ship internationally, albeit slowly. If you want them faster, Shipito is great for forwarding packages from the US.
FWIW, it seems relatively rare to use Makita routers in Europe, generally folks use AMB/Kress, Mafell etc., at least that’s what I see all over the CNC stores. Also spindles of course and those usually have ER collets.
If the question is “why aren’t there more”, that’d be because we’re in Europe and nobody wants Imperial tools if they can avoid them.
If the question is “why are these ones Imperial when all the others are metric”, I’m not sure, my guess would be that they come from a different grinder. <6mm tools intended for anything other than micromachining seem to be relatively rare. Even if you only want a 3mm cutting diameter, the vast majority of endmills you’ll find outside of hobby distributors will have a 6mm shank. So maybe he had to find a different grinder for the ~3mm shank endmills.
You can also ask him, he’s been pretty open about questions I’ve asked him.
Generally you’ll need to get used to entering tool specifications yourself but maybe @Julien has made a library he can share.
I’m a joiner, makita routers are common in our workshop, but usually we use 8mm endmills and sometimes 6mm. we never use imperial endmills. you won’t find them at suppliers in France. There are only endmills from dremell, so 3.17mm.
For the imperial collets, I chose the ones from carbide 3d. they are great and I wanted to make sure they were well machined. you can find them on roboshop. (out of stock at the moment)
The makita router is already supplied with 8mm and 6mm collets.
I create my library of Endmills little by little, depending on my milling cutters, I find it personal, depending on your organisation and settings, it’s quite fast on fusion 360.
@Julien@Bwood34@Moded1952 Thanks a lot for your suggestions. It seems like you have a lot of overlap in what you’d choose from CNCFraises .
For one of my first projects, I’m planning to make something similar (in shape) to what you did @Julien. You didn’t need a ball nose endmill to create well rounded corners?
I’ve also been thinking about creating an inlay with the V-carve technique. I’m not sure which V-bit I should get from CNCFraises though? The ones they have look a bit rough (https://www.cncfraises.fr/208-carving)?
That would have been ideal, but I could not find any ballnose with such a long reach, so I decided to just use the 1/8" square with a tiny stepover, and with the specific geometry I had, it worked well enough.
Yeah I had the same feeling that those were visually undistinguishable (it that a word ?) from the c*** I once bought on ebay, so I preferred to pass. But in hindsight, given the quality of his other tools in store, they might well be excellent Vbit. In the end I did not order my 60° and 90° Vbits there because I have the C3D ones and they are excellent.
Looks good, I would maybe just not pick that particular 45° vbit as I think it is more suitable for engraving (PCBs) than v-carving wood (but then again I never tried). I would rather but that one
which is similar to the 25° I got and I have been in love with.
. Do you have a special eBay shop you buy from or are you just browsing around?
. I’ve actually ordered the Shapeoko Endmill Starter Pack (
