Most cutting tools have replaceable attachments. These are called cutting tool inserts. They can be of various shapes and sizes – round, triangular, square, rectangular, rhombic, five-sided or even eight-sided. Cutting tool inserts are used in varied applications – from cutting and drilling to boring, grooving, sawing, threading, mining and milling. Some of them are so adjustable that when the edges become worn out, other unused edge portions come into use!

Besides their shape, inserts also come with different angles for their tips. A ball nose mill is used for grooves or semicircles. A radius tip mill is used on milling cutters. A chamfer tip mill is ideal for an angled cut or a chamfered edge. A dogbone tip is two-edged and is used for grooving.

What are inserts made of? They are usually made of carbide, high-speed steel, silicon nitride, ceramic, cobalt, diamond particles, etc. They are then coated with substances like titanium aluminum nitride, zinc nitride or chromium nitride to make them even stronger. Some of these composite alloys go up to a hardness of 60 RC. These new age super alloys are becoming very popular in industry today. They withstand a high amount of shock and heat and resist wear and tear. So economizing on inserts may not be such a good idea for a manufacturing unit because they pay for themselves in a very short time. However, investing in costly inserts without warranting it would not be advisable because working them with wrong speeds and feeds would be detrimental to the life of these tools.

Advice and training from an acknowledged cutting tool inserts manufacturer would go a long way in ensuring you get the best possible output from your investment. Today, there are cutting tool inserts that last up to 40% longer than they used to. High cutting force, feed without vibration and the same insert used for various applications are some of the advantages of today’s inserts.