endmills for wood

[Mike Annetts]

Hello

Our school has some end mills available to use with our wood cnc router. My question is: how fast can these end mills be run at before they are damaged or are unsafe? They are four flute ranging from .125 to .75 in diameter. They are high speed steel (I think). (Not much exp in metal working cutters). One last question: cann anyone reccomend any feed rates and speeds. we typically cut plywood, ash and strawboard (made with flax straw)

Thanks for any help.

Mike

[Travis_Buchanan]

I don't know much about end mills either, but I do know that the tool geometry is different from a router bit. Hook & relief angles are different. One of our engineers gave me a 3/4" end mill the other day and said this thing should last a week on a router cutting wood, cause they can cut metal with it all day. I ran one part with it, about 50" total cut length and it was smoking like a freight train. I took it out of the machine and it was as dull as a butter knife. I don't use anything but carbide or diamond on our routers except for a high speed steel drill once in a while. I don't expect that you will have very much luck with metal cutting tools, but if you do please let us know.

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Buzz Lightyear

[ERIC14779]

I agree with Buzz

Use only Carbide or if you have a deep wallet diamond.

We cut wood,polyurethane tooling board, all types of plastics with our routers.

we use either solid carbide or carbide tipped ROUTER BITS from Onsrud (onsrud.com) they have a large selection of bits and will help you select the best tool for the job

 

end mills are for metal

use a router bit for wood....