Whiteside 6wing slot cutter

I've always centered the middle of the carbide to the C/L of the lathe with good results. Since you have six cutters moving against the wood, I usually use a fairly fast feed rate on the carriage as opposed to a two cutter roughing pass.

Alan
 
I use a 6 wing cutter also, its my experience that the more blade contact the better. Ive tried cutting a little higher or lower of center and its not quite as smooth. Also feed rate will affect chatter and/or swirl when cutting. You want to keep the blades clean a little denatured alcohol will get off and build up.
 
Russell Cues said:
I use a 6 wing cutter also, its my experience that the more blade contact the better. Ive tried cutting a little higher or lower of center and its not quite as smooth. Also feed rate will affect chatter and/or swirl when cutting. You want to keep the blades clean a little denatured alcohol will get off and build up.
Click to expand...

^^^^^ ditto ^^^^^
^^^ what he said ^^^
:thumbup:
Gary
 
I would recommend chucking the cutter with arbor in your lathe and then with a dial indicator, slowly spin the chuck by hand and check the individual cutters, you may find them to be as much as .025" off from one to the one next to it. This will affect chatter, etc.
If it's ok, then I would go with centerline of lathe to center of cutter blade.
Dave
 
Dave38 said:
I would recommend chucking the cutter with arbor in your lathe and then with a dial indicator, slowly spin the chuck by hand and check the individual cutters, you may find them to be as much as .025" off from one to the one next to it. This will affect chatter, etc.
If it's ok, then I would go with centerline of lathe to center of cutter blade.
Dave
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Dave is absolutely correct I am lucky in that my Woodcraft store here has an off-site guy who sharpens carbide cutting tools ($8 for my 6-wing). I occasionally drop it off installed on the arbor,with instructions to try to minimize the run-out between the cutters and he's gotten it down a lot closer than it used to be.

My 2 cents,
Gary
 
Thank you for all the replies and private messages. All this information has been very helpful.

I replaced the bearings on my Porter Cable trimmer and ran a few pieces of scrap with the center of the cutter on the center line of the lathe and it cut very smooth.
I did notice that the lower bearing did seem to get a lot hotter than the old bearing,
I will mess with it some more on Sunday and see if the temperature improves once the bearing breaks in some. I used a RB Tech Premium Bearing for the lower bearing and it did not list a speed limit, maybe this bearing is not rated for 20,000 plus RPM.
 
GBCues said:
Dave is absolutely correct I am lucky in that my Woodcraft store here has an off-site guy who sharpens carbide cutting tools ($8 for my 6-wing). I occasionally drop it off installed on the arbor,with instructions to try to minimize the run-out between the cutters and he's gotten it down a lot closer than it used to be.

My 2 cents,
Gary
Click to expand...

Thanks Gary for the backup, I now use Porter Cable 3 wing cutters that all of the 10 cutters I bought, run only about .002" off from each other, and things seem to run 'smoother'. I looked into having the other 6 wing cutters I owned re-ground locally and it was actually going to be cheaper to buy new ones, so I just found a better product that was cheaper per cutter, so a win-win:D.
Dave
 
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