Iscar Tang Grip TGFH parting tool tests

Stung into action by several months of forced separation from my workshop, I suffered another serious accident involving a mouse. On this occasion it resulted in the delivery of a 3mm version of the 32mm blade Iscar TGFH parting tool kit from Zoro and 5 of the uncoated IC20 inserts for loominum cutting. They were on offer, so actually cheaper than currently shown and I also got an additional 5% coupon code to apply at checkout.

Found myself back home and in the workshop this afternoon due to impending leave, so it would have seemed rude not to have done some initial tests.

Found a piece of 2" dia mystery steel and mounted the tool up in the holder. Being an industry standard parting blade size, I was able to swap out my existing Korloy "Saw Man" blade for this one quite simply.

The parameters for the (steel cutting) IC808 inserts are 4-10 thou per rev and 80-180 m/min (sorry for mixing units but my Bantam has an imperial feed gearbox). That translates to about 700rpm min surface speed.

Started out using girly settings ie 250rpm or so with tentative hand feed and the whole machine almost shook itself apart. Quite alarming and surely not good for anything.

Then upped the speed to 700rpm and took a more serious cut. Job done - no juddering and a nice curly ribbon of swarf. Juddering only started when the tool approached the centre, at which point the surface speed was obviously quite a bit lower. Engaged the feed (about 3 thou per rev) at 7000rpm and it cut like a good 'un.

Seems to confirm what has been said here before - the cure for juddering during parting with these indexable tools is to use the proper surface speed and feed per rev and use power feed. Trying to girl out simply makes it judder unmanageably.

I should probably find some mystery loominum and repeat the exercise now with the (uncoated) IC20 inserts. In the interests of science of course.