Making A BIG 200mm Fly Cutter For The Milling Machine

G'day everyone,
I think I first saw a Clickspring video back in 2015 and since then I've had the urge to make one of those big fly cutters that he has for his workshop. And since I have a project coming up where I need to face some large pieces of steel bar stock, I couldn't help but jump at the opportunity to make one for myself.
It is effectively a big 200mm piece of 6061 aluminum bar stock with a morse 3 taper arbor and a holder for the carbide insert. However, the project wasn't as straightforward as I thought it was going to be. The bar stock was a little big for the 130mm chucks I own, o I had to do a lot of the roughing on the mill, turn down the arbor and hold the arbor in the spindle bore to turn it down.
In the end I end up with a fantastic tool, even if it is not as fast as a smaller fly cutter, the finish I can get is much finer and closer to that desired mirror finish. I hope you enjoy the video.
Mill - Sieg x2.7l
Lathe Hafco Al 250G
Red lathe - Sieg c3 7x14 Mini Lathe
#machining #flycutter #millingmachine
Fly Cutter build
How to make a fly cutter
Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction
2:35 - Machining The Main Body Of The Fly Cutter
7:24 - Machining The Morse Taper Shank
12:34 - Machining The Bottom Cap
13:26 - Finishing Teh Fly Cutter Body
15:30 - Making The Cutter Holders
18:35 - Time To Test It

[@artisanmakes]

Before anyone asks, yes, I did recently watch a rerun of Crocodile Dundee before making this. Also make sure to keep your defensive fly cutter on you at all times, never know when it might come in handy.

[@gary851]

dont cut stock by hand!

[@Kineth1]

This defensive fly cutter sure looks like it could stop a knife - or a bullet.

[@Celcius1]

surprised you did not try to imitate Paul Hogan's voice!

[@charl_k]

That was my first thought, having recently referenced that line in a comment on another channel.

[@georgescott6967]

Well done getting the "that" right! Most people would say "That's not a fly cutter, THIS is a fly cutter". It sounds better but is not the wording used in the movie.

[@unperrier5998]

"The Inheritance Machinist" also made one of similar design, except that he balanced it.

[@jjcc8379]

Thank you ! I was having a deja vu of "I've seen this already .. but maybe it was another channel". Inheritance Machinist it was. Yeah.

[@kundeleczek1]

Same though

[@leslieaustin151]

Nice job! I’ve also watched Chris at Clickspring and also IM, but yours is good, as are the others. I was wondering how a small milling machine was going to handle such a large (and possibly unbalanced) cutter, but it seems to do very well. Thanks for the video. Les in UK

[@Don_Dries]

I love IM's channel but It doesn't mean IM made one that noone ever can make one again... give this guy a break 😂

[@sprengstoffman]

It's written in the Video Description😂

[@furcornphil]

the first 10 seconds is the machining equivalent of „you vs the guy she tells you not to worry about”

[@ronwilken5219]

Back in the 1970's I was trying to make a large angle plate for work holding on a Myford super 7 lathe. The subject was a six inch long piece of 6"*6"*1/2" angle. Suitable holes drilled to match the T slots in the cross slide allowed it to be mounted for facing. Didnt have access to a mill. Needing a fly cutter I tried a steel post with a 1/4" hss insert attached to the face plate. It worked but the hss couldn't stand the cutting of the steel angle. Carbide lathe tools were rare and hard to come by but used concrete drills were easily had. Remove the tip, braze it onto a four inch piece of 1"*1" steel bar and sharpen on a green stone. To mount it I used a 6" four jaw chuck, two jaws forward and two backward. The tool nested in the two backward jaws to give a 6+" diameter and the forward jaws, hard up against the sides, stopped everything from flying apart. Proceeded slowly and had to duck from hot bits coming off the tool but a few passes and we had a suitable angle capable of holding the parts we needed to machine and perfectly trammed to the lathe axis. Still have the tool but unfortunately not the angle. There have been times I could have used it. Maybe I should make another.

[@ferrumignis]

Another beautifully made tool 👍 Make sure your machine is trammed spot on, a big fly cutter is good for scooping out hollows otherwise! Just a thought, put a suitable hole near the outside to mount a DTI for tramming, dual purpose tool!

[@RedDogForge]

"that consists of sweeping with an indicator, hitting the part with a hammer, and hoping someething happens" lol..i felt that one. ive been working on a cylindrical square and it seems ive spent my entire week doing that very thing lol

[@MultigrainKevinOs]

I love that all your projects and videos dovetail into each other. Beautiful work as always !

[@joshlewis5065]

Reminds me of Inheritance Machining fly cutter

[@alphadog6970]

I thought i opened his video by mistake 😅😅

[@MrDuck-rc8kc]

Same

[@Gin-toki]

Now you have this big flycutter, you are ready to make an even bigger one! The biggest of all flycutters!

[@haydenc2742]

That would be called the Abom flycutter :D

[@DD-DD-DD]

"Oh you believe the camera steals your soul away, don't you?" "Naw lady, you got the lens cap on."

[@CatNolara]

For mounting on the lathe, you could maybe have drilled and tapped some holes for studs first and bolt the workpiece directly to the spindle.

[@artisanmakes]

You could. Definitely another way to do it

[@xXVintersorgXx]

The mill was a little bit safer I think

[@vivigarr]

The way you put it directly in the spindle taper was a smart move. Thank you for showing me something new that I can keep in mind for my own future projects. It's so obvious watching you do it, but I would have never thought of it lol

[@bostedtap8399]

Insert holder/cartridge is a brilliant design, well supported, great build 👏. Thanks for sharing

[@machobunny1]

Very educational to see you make your own Morse taper. I'd have just bought one, I think, but seeing you do this makes me want to go try it. I think this fly cutter will be the next tool I make.

[@daxis5]

I love the project flow through with these past few videos.

[@M00j3]

Great video, thanks for all the useful advice too! I'd love to see more on your approach to designing components of a project, how engineers approach a task is often more important than the task itself x

[@ErikBongers]

Not sure you'll even need a counter weight. The steel parts are heavier than aluminium, thus maybe countering the slot you made.

[@edsmachine93]

Nice job. Good design. Thanks for sharing.

[@homemadetools]

Nice. Everyone loves a big fly cutter. We shared this video on our homemade tools forum this week😎

[@robertwalker7457]

Superlative effort, I look forward to seeing it at work.

[@hillonwheels8838]

You made this project look so easy to do. I thought you were going to have some convoluted ball screw or something to adjust the diameter it would cut. I definitely over thought this project. Now it looks like you need a auto feed for your mill to help get the best finish with this new cutter.

[@DudleyToolwright]

Nice work. Interesting design.

[@markiobook8639]

Very fine work, young man. A credit to your teacher.

[@frostbitevinnie]

A good way to break up chips in stickey material is to drill holes close to your finished diameter. This way instead of having chips for the full circumferance you will have chip breaks for every section.

[@TalRohan]

Now to find a fly big enough to warrant having a go at it with your new tooling..... Looking forward to the next (hopefully ) video where you use it for a project ...cool stuff

[@howder1951]

Nice design of the toolholder, et al. I have a large disk of steel sitting on an unused R-8 shank so it looks as if I cab follow your foot steps. Enjoyed, thanks for the video, cheers!

[@mftmachining]

Excellent job.

[@Guds777]

You are turning into regular machinist. Nice job. I personally would add 3 other slots with insert on each slot so it will cut 4 times per revolution. But of course that depends on the power your mill has...

[@adamr8878]

That will add the possibility of vibration (more teeth in contact) and force you to align all 4 cutting edges height wise in order to maintain a high quality surface finish. Single point fly cutters make sense in so many ways, and unless you are chasing seconds, possibly do more hard than good.

[@billshiff2060]

@@adamr8878 Naw, I have made several and it works fine. You don't HAVE to align all 4 in fact I deliberately miss-align them depending on the job. You can either feed 4 times faster or cut 4 times deeper. Aligning them is not actually hard if it is incorporated in the design.

[@pawekowalski7469]

Nice tool and job👍👍👍

[@oppanheimer]

Great job mate, well done.

[@paulthomas3782]

Fantastic tool great finish very useful thank you for sharing this build Cheers.

[@de-bodgery]

Gotta love all the tiny metal splinters from side milling!

[@DunderOz]

Lovely work, as always 🙂

[@madhukeshnp]

Instead of adding counter weight to balance, you can add one more cutting edge on the opposite side. I dont know if this works. But theoretically it should work and be effecient as well.

[@wizrom3046]

My friend has a homemade 300mm cutter like that, on a bridgeport and uses it to skim car cylinder heads in one pass. He has 2 inserts, slightly different positions, at 180 degrees, so its balanced. Also, one insert is a bit further out and a few thou higher than the other, so in one pass it takes a cut and 180 degree later the second insert does a finishing cut 9f a couple thou if you get what I mean. Looks homemade but he is smart and it works superb.

[@artisanmakes]

And I thought 200mm was big. That’s gotta be one huge piece of tooling

[@wizrom3046]

@@artisanmakes ... yeah i5's not pretty, looks like it was cut from some 30mm plate aluminium and lathed round. He does engines aso had ability to balance it good, and of course the bridgeport geared head has a lot of low speed torque for something that diameter. He can do a 6cyl car head in one pass on X axis on bridgeport.

[@rocket_rod67]

That's a big one! Well made. If you only use 1 V-Block this gives you the preferred 3 points of contact for better clamping and added safety.

[@ypaulbrown]

this is fantastic, thank you for showing us how.....Paul in USA

[@sstdiecastracing2372]

Nice. Thanks for sharing.

[@jacehardin7828]

I think itd be neat to add some neasuring notches to the insert holder so you know exactly how wide the cutters working

[@GarethKing1]

Really pumping them out at the moment mate, good work

[@jameslmorehead]

One thing you can to to reduce vibration is to bevel the top side of the fly cutter's wheel. Removing sufficient material will create multiple harmonics and help keep the cutter from vibrating at any one specific harmonic.

[@DasIllu]

Wow, it even doubles as a fly swatter 😀

[@siggibohlenbrecher1403]

Sehr gut gemacht.

[@alankeith7866]

I got to thinking about how much your hack saw blade budget is... It has to be enormous!!!😂😂😂

[@mastermaker666]

Random Orbit sanders are a great way of putting an uniform finish on metal surfaces. A light touch and a courser grit than what you may think(60-80 tends to be my default) is the better way of doing this(especially on alu) and the disks without holes last a lot longer and you don't really need them as you're not really removing any real measure of metal as much as just creating a uniform surface on it.

[@bscoffeeandwelding7236]

And they say size doesn't matter, nice work

[@ScheunenTecCNC]

Nice Fly Cutter Build and my first thinking was also Crocodile Dundee 🤣

[@SuperJaXXas]

Nice, on my list!

[@wmweekendwarrior1166]

Good stuff

[@galactica1980]

When i made my own little fly cutter, i welded a nut on the opposite side of the cutter and used a long bolt as an adjustable counter weight to reduce vibration.

[@st170ish]

Nice fly swatter 😁

[@ulrikjohansson140]

Impressive!

[@OWSNubbles]

The era of huge youtuber fly cutters

[@jackdawg4579]

Nice job, should come in handy for when you start hot rodding that AL250 :)

[@jameskirk3]

I would definitely add a cutter on the opposite side, one set further from center and less depth, the second set closer to the center and more depth, and you will help with balance, plsy take more material per pass.

[@billshiff2060]

I'd be watching the strain on the motor when trying to accelerate that big wheel.

[@coyzee1]

Crikey mate, you're up early. Great vids, thanks.

[@WobblycogsUk]

It's not about the size of your tool but what you do with it. I look forward to seeing your future projects.

[@owen368]

Large disc of death woo!

[@minigpracing3068]

I would definitely static balance that, just a hand drill and fair sized bit would get that job done quickly. The mass of the big flywheel should help it to power through a cut.

[@mrcpu9999]

Everytime I think about going to Australia for a vacation, I keep wondering how I'd recognize some of the people I follow on youtube that don't appear on camera. Then I realized, all I need to do for AM is just look for the normal looking guy leaning slightly to the right with the gigantic right arm bicep/tricep from all that hacksawing. Easy peasy.

[@neilgarrad4931]

Thanks

[@The411]

I have FC envy now :)

[@sparkiekosten5902]

I wonder if you should have cut an opposing groove and make like a dual cutter but don't insert the second carbide button. It looked like there was a shake with the camera as you were cutting with the new fly cutter! Either way it looks like it did a good job in the end. Looking forward to that big chunk of steel getting its haircut! It is always amazing to see the finish come out after a fly cut. Keep up the good work!

[@artisanmakes]

It’ll do that when the speeds and feeds aren’t spot on. Could be the balance but the big fly cutter can be unforgiving

[@corwind3888]

Some 40 years ago I worked at a machine shop and used a fly cutter something like this, only it had three cutters - one set for a shallow cut but set furtherest outboard, one mid depth and diameter, and the third set for a deeper cut and set furtherest inboard.

[@WayneCook306]

Another great job. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@mr.nobody9074]

JUST to be safe you should machine a replacement spindle for the mill while is still in one piece and if it breaks just swap it out

[@TheDistur]

I want to find you a comically large hacksaw. Really cool project!

[@lolcec81]

Комментарий в поддержку канала и ролика, а также труда мастера.

[@XtreeM_FaiL]

You should try alcohol as a coolant when working with aluminium. Isopropyl alcohol, methanol... Less gummy and leaves good finish. And a good ventilation. Methanol is not the safest, but it works great.

[@jimurrata6785]

It works for Stephan.

[@Ideasite]

How about mounting the round blank on the taper in the mill. Then, clamp a cutting tool vertically in your vise & use the X-feed to face the underside? That would also keep it parallel with the mill deck.

[@philliplucion4262]

Ol artisan Dundee gud day mate

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I made one from an old cast iron lathe faceplate but filled the back with molten lead to deaden the ringing and make it even more terrifying. On my Bridgeport I had to balance it really carefully or it caused ripples and harmonics. I decided it was too dangerous to use cast iron without a serious guard, so I melted the lead out and used the faceplate for something else. It's due for a remake in steel, but I'll still use a lead infill to kill off the ringing. I used an ordinary lathe tool to hold the cutting insert and a lump of steel the same weight and size for the counterbalance. It looked terrible, but worked well.

[@artisanmakes]

If it worked well that’s all that matters. Cheers

[@seansysig]

Counterweight is a must to minimize bearing load.

[@allenmays8512]

Nicely done. I'll be honest, my first thought was that you were just going to press/shrink fit the cutter onto a MT3/JT3 arbor. I like that you made a larger fit arbor with a screw to secure it. I would rather use 7075 for a project like this, but 6061 shouldn't be a problem to machine - carbide cutters and mist coolant! 6063 on the other hand...

[@johannriedlberger4390]

That were perfect to make a cylinder head flat. But the 500mm travel in the x-axis is not enough with such a big cutter.

[@JLK89]

Now you just need some polished cbn/diamond button inserts to make a REALLY good finish.

[@josephbasanta]

Nice job! Would suggest that you get some Permatex Prussian Blue used to seat vales when cutting the valve seats in the engine. It is a non-drying oily paste that will show you the engagement points of your taper. Finally, buy a potable band saw, trust me you will like it.

[@artisanmakes]

Good thinking. I probably should have blued it up.

[@haydenc2742]

"Kurtis Dundee" :D (hint...CEE) Love it! Keep em coming!!!!

[@beesbo1856]

Flycutter Dundee

[@TechnoBillyD]

I love you you always seem to GO BIG :-) I have a question about the sx2.7 mill. I have one but I cant work out how to lube the main bearings on the shaft? I use way oil on the slides and happy with it, but have never worked out how to lubed the bearings.

[@jamescopeland5358]

Cool

[@MrBiddo]

might be an idea to drill out some material on the insert side to balance, you can see the imbalance causing vibration/oscillation in your test cuts.

[@jimsvideos7201]

I'd be curious to see how the balance on that actually is, given the slot cut out and tooling put in.

[@IOERROR622]

You should engrave the feeds and speed for each matarial on the back side of the cutter for quick reference in the future. Over all nice job.

[@wombora]

Thats all nice and fine - but how do you cut flys with that thing?

[@XtreeM_FaiL]

You need to catch one first. 1. Take a chopsticks. 2. Catch a fly. 3.

[@alan-sk7ky]

At the end, when you were cutting the ali and the steel, there looked like there was a bit of wheeble-wobble going on, bung a bit of balance on any way, drill hole and a slug of lead with loctite ;-)

[@artisanmakes]

Yeah it tends to do that if the speeds and feeds aren’t 100 percent spot on. It seems to disappear when you get the right speed so I don’t know if that’s balance or something else going on

[@feelthepayne88]

What's the runout on the face of the tool when it's loaded in the spindle?

[@frankv1195]

good day friend. I congratulate you for that good job. Could you give me the name of the inserts that you used in the lathe, I need to get that type of insert for my work.

[@joshclark44]

How'd I know he'd say "looks like I'll need a flycutter to make a flycutter" lol machinists favorite phrase. Also if you didn't press it in you could have flipped it to face the top side on the lathe

[@DanWallis86]

Hey mate. I recently got an old Granville lathe. I’m just wanting to learn more about machining. The cast headstock on it is cracked and has been repaired multiple times, but I want to get it sorted properly. Who could I speak to about getting something made that needs to be precise?

[@ForgedShaft]

Could you use that fly cutter to surface cylinder heads on the mill?

[@ArcAiN6]

Just a heads up... you should broach a keyway into that fly cutter, and arbor, and key them together. Just an added bit of safety to keep the fly cutter from spinning on the arbor.

[@artisanmakes]

If worse come to worse a pin drilled through the cap to lock it in place can do a similar job

[@Neploid27]

Think you could do engine head work using this new tool? I have always wondered what level of precision you need to do head work. Do you have an idea of how much deviation your mill has when cutting with a fly cutter in the z axis?

[@lindonwatson5402]

very good fit for hitting lathe and hoping something happens

[@marcwagner9404]

Now you can also see how square the spindle is to the morning axis ( witch is super important btw)

[@artisanmakes]

Tram and nod no?

[@thealicemonster9217]

Loved the video. I think the part looks really nice but perhaps a bevel on the edges instead of sharp edges would look better?

[@31415926rat]

Dialing in cutter, find manufacturers suggested surface feed for insert. D=diameter of tool. Then use… RPM=(sfm•3.82)/D

[@cammos]

Just came across ur channel dude i like it. I watch cutting edge alot man kurtis is so smart do you ever watch him? I learned so much from his channel alot dif scale but similar i hope to learn some things from u also.

[@rockon-wbfqlkjqhsydic72683]

Great videos! Did you make one for the cool side clamps? If so I could not find it.

[@artisanmakes]

Are you referring to the 2 piece vice? If so yes there is a video on it

[@anthonycash4609]

Whats the perpous of the allen headed bolt in the end of your carbide cutting tool that you were using to true up the round stock.

[@artisanmakes]

its to hold a chip guard that I can keep out of the camera shot

[@testi2025]

I believe you should position the work on Y-axis more “up” so that the insert would hit the part in a shallower angle.

[@artisanmakes]

Doing that always worked best when I use DCGT inserts