Resharpening these end mills?

For a project I’m working on, I’m burning through these Amana HSS1502 end mills. They’re HSS, single straight flute. It’s pretty simple geometry & it seems like these could be fairly easy to resharpen. And I’m only using the bottom 1/8" of cutting length, so lots of room for resharpening. They’re cheap, only $8.70 on Toolstoday.com.

I know nothing about resharpening. Any ideas on about what this might cost? Anything about this end mill (aside from cost) that might make resharpening not an option?

PS, I know there might be better end mills for my project & I plan to try some things someday but I can’t right now - have to go with what I know works.

Thanks!

Yes, it can be done.

It used to be (presumably still is) a basic part of an apprentice machinist’s training.

The problem is, at labour rates these days, one needs an awful lot of them to justify a setup to sharpen a particular geometry.

I contacted a cutting tool sharpening service near me and they would charge $6 each for HSS endmills when I checked. About $8 for carbide. Inexpensive so just check near you. You could also ship them somewhere. Nucut Grinding online will sharpen a 1/4" 2-flute HSS endmill for $3.80.

1 Like

That’s not super cost effective for an $8 end mill.

2 Likes

Agreed. It makes a lot more sense when you’re buying $100, 3/4" endmills

It is quite difficult to sharpen HHS and/or Carbide bits without jigs to hold them at a specific angle. That said on HHS you can sharpen the end with a diamond card sharpener. The diamond card is about credit card size and you want a fine or super fine one. Only make a few passes. If you over work the edge you will only round it over. Make the same number of passes on each cutting edge. You said you only had one but two or three flute bits make the same number of passes on each edge. Do not try to sharpen the flutes. As others said sharpening services make sense if you have a lot of them and are in production. It may be cheaper to just replace them. If you do try to sharpen use your dominant hand to move the sharpening card and hold the bit in your weak hand. Feel for the edge and make short strokes and only a few. You can feel the edge before sharpening and after. It will feel sharp if you succeeded. The more you hack on it the worse it will get.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.