Have you ever needed to turn hardened steel like a dowel pin, drill rod, or ball screw? We recently had to machine a shoulder on a ball screw for an upcoming project, and did an experiment to find the best combination of cutting insert, depth of cut, feed, and speed. In this video, we’ll show you how a variety of carbide inserts perform machining a high speed steel drill rod that is hardened to 65 HRC, the importance of maintaining a minimum depth of cut, even in tough materials, and how to get great results without fancy (and expensive) CBN inserts.
