Cutting Tungsten Carbide

Well it's not often that I'll be damned, but today, I'll be damned. 😯

I bought these extra long ball and flat nose end mills for cutting the lower side of the Red Special neck because they have a flute length of 38 mm compared to 25 mm for a standard 'long' flute cutter. I only plan to cut the upper side to 15 mm depth with 5 mm ball and flat nose end mills so standard length cutters will do. However, the overall length of the extra long bits is 100 mm and I didn't really think about how I was going to reduce the length (75 mm will do), I just assumed that I'd work something out. 😕

I figured that I'd just try a quick cut with a diamond coated cut off discs I probably bought cheaply off eBay some time go. I matched them to a meaty 1/4" arbor which I had to grind flats into to allow enough purchase with pliers to release the holding screw. A bit of a lash-up but it worked for steel and aluminium.

I was somewhat astonished to find that these discs went through the micrograin solid tungsten carbide rod like a hot knife through butter. 😯 😯 With the cutter most of the way through, the stump just snapped off like an ice lolly/popsicle.

Obviously, the carbide rod is hard but brittle and easy to grind away... either that or the diamond coated cut off discs are much heavier duty than I thought.

Doug