Roughing With Old Finishing Inserts

A large variety of indexable inserts have chip-breaker grooves ground or pressed in for controlling chips. I have discovered, that it is possible to grind a groove on a used plain insert to remove the worn portion and re-use the insert for rough milling instead of buying new ones. At my shop, we rough machine aluminum cylinder heads using previously worn ISO SFAN 1203 inserts. They perform well and save us from having to purchase hundreds of new inserts.