Thread: Machinist's / hobby machinist's

My new lathe has only been here 2 weeks and uses 20mm tooling so early days on carbide life but they are so cheap i think it is a non issue.I have two friends who do this for a living over the last twenty years and only use hss if it is soft like brass alloy etc as it stops the chips coming back at you like carbide.One refuses to use hss as the speed he can cut and remove material with carbide is far more efficient.He is also taking 8mm off in a single pass on some jobs !!