Usual preface, I’m with PreciseBits so while I try to only post general information take everything I say with the understanding that I have a bias.

Helical 1/2 and 3/8 Carbide End Mills. 5 Flute 1/2- 0.010cr 3/8- 0.03cr. Pre-Owned. Helical. $35.00. $4.25 shipping.

Speed TigerEnd mills

These end mills deliver smooth finish. They have smooth outside dimeter and one square end. This diameter creates smooth finish on a work piece.

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HELIX ANGLE The helix angle is the measure of angle between tool’s centerline and straight line tangent with the cutting edge. The higher the helix angle, the more easily chips of softer materials can escape. Therefore, end mills with comparatively higher helix angles than standard end mills are used. The angle with 35°, 40°, or 45° are preferred. In the market, variable helix tools are also available which reduces harmonics and chatter and also enhances material removal rates efficiency. 35° or 40° helix angles are used as a standard for roughing and slotting in aluminum. But 45° helix angles are suitable for high efficiency milling toolpaths because end mills with higher helix angles makes more aggressive cut and wraps around the tool faster.

BTW, when you sign up for an account, the text I entered was white on a white background. Couldn’t see it at all. Should be a relatively easy change for you.

The closest you can get to this is Janka rating and only for like grain structure and integration. It’s a hardness rating created by measuring the amount of force it takes to embed a steel ball to a certain depth in the wood. Again though that’s, only one part of the wood variability. It can be useful if you have good data in a similar wood. You can use it as a ratio to your chipload/feed or pass depth. Won’t be ideal but it will get you a starting number that’s decent IF your original is good.

Apart from the selection of end mill, setting the right machine requirements will result in maximum output. The above parameters are typical but they will need tweaking for special applications.

Effective chips evacuation is one of the most crucial factor while machining aluminum. 2-3 flutes operating at recommended feed rates and speeds lets escape the chips fairly well. But there is another specialized tool more efficient than the standard ones. The 3 flute chipbreaker tool runs at more speed and feed rates and delivers better results. The geometry of the chipbreaker produces smaller chips for fast evacuation and leaves half-finished surface.

⚫ finish cuts typically require reduced feed and cutting depths of 0.02 X D₁ maximum. • ramp angle = 6° (feed rate = 50%). • plunging not recommended.

Their single cutting edge design provides more space for chips to evacuate resulting in higher chip loads and faster feed rates.

I used to be particular about chip load etc but after burning out three Makitas in a year decided to use setups that are easy on the router. I think that router bit longevity being shortened due to possible overheating is less expensive than replacing routers. So far have had no reason to change this after about 4 months of daily use. I also have one of these mounted on a bench lathe, but it would be simple to put it on a drill press or hand drill. which I use to clean each bit when I change bits. Very quick and very inexpensive. amazon.com/Jewelry-Polishing-Bristles-Polisher-Diameter/dp/B0B5QLVJT3/ref=sr_1_38?crid=U5OFE62M4Y4K&keywords=jewellers+bristle+brush&qid=1707684079&sprefix=jewellers+bristle+brush%2Caps%2C397&sr=8-38

These end mills have teeth at their flute’s periphery used to create rough texture on the surface. The purpose of these teeth is they transform material into small chips and then evacuates the material quickly. It also reduces vibration during milling.

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Lakeshore carbide

While you can use heat as a sort of litmus test it’s not the most important part of hitting a minimum chipload. The real issue is that if you are not taking a large enough bite (chipload) you are not “cutting” but “rubbing” or “grinding” the material out of the way. Not only does this generate heat and reduce tool life but also increases the cutting forces (worse for the router) and produces a poor quality cut.

i have some SPE bits and their website has a downloadable tool database that goes directly into fusion 360. pretty awesome. pick the tool, the type of wood and it presets all the numbers based on their manufacture recommendations. has worked really well. that doesn’t mean i haven’t edited some of the numbers but their numbers have worked 95% of the time without any changes.

@Enginerd Chris, I’ve uploaded the Amana database and it’s a great place to start but it doesn’t take into account the type of wood.

Quick question on this subject. do you use different settings when carving a 3D relief. As opposed to flatwork like a sign. an example is a 1/4 ballnose in maple.

Bestcoatingforcuttingaluminum

As discussed earlier, 2 or 3 flutes in an end mill will deliver the right results. But for specific usage and machine setup, you need to consider more tooling option to give better performance and to carry out specialized milling, slotting or profiling. Following are some of the tooling operation that can give better results.

Aluminum is highly workable and light weight material. Products manufactured from this material are used in almost every industry. Its low cost and flexibility makes it a demandable material for CNC milling.

@RockingMallet Hey Joshua, thanks for that link. What I like about it is that it takes into account the depth of cut and the stepover as well.

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Best end mills for aluminumcar

MATERIAL The best preferred material for making end mills is carbide because it says sharp for long time. Although carbide-made end mills are brittle in nature, but using it on aluminum makes it a great cutting tool. One of the downside of carbide end mills is that they are expensive compared to High-Speed steel. But if you can afford them, they can cut the aluminum with high speed and feed rates and will also last longer in comparison. TOOL COATING Since aluminum is soft when compared to other materials, during CNC milling, its chips can clog in the CNC tool, especially when you are plunging deeper. Coating the end mills with the right material can help resolve the problem. Most common used coating on an end mill is Titanium Aluminum Nitride (TiAIN). These are slippery coatings and allows the chips to slip easily through the flutes while milling. It is also effective in case you are not using any coolant. The coating is mainly used on carbide tools. But if you are using high-speed steel (HSS), you should use Titanium Carbo-Nitride (TiCN). This coating will also serve the purpose for lubricity required for aluminum milling. The only downside of this type of coating is its high cost. Other type of coating material is Titanium Diboride (TiB2) etc. Though there are uncoated tools available, using them will only bring damage to your tool and the work piece.

There’s also an issue of potentially needing a different chipload if the rake in the ball is not aggressive enough to match the side flutes of the cutter.

To be clear, I don’t know what you’re cutting at, your tool geometries, or materials so you may be hitting a minimum chipload.

May 25, 2023 — The two most common point angles for metals are 118 degrees and 135 degrees. The sharper 118-degree angle is best used for softer metals.

There’s multiple issues with wood and correct chiploads (feed and speed). Since it’s a grown material it starts off variable and get more complicated from there. For a few common examples, woods cut differently with changes in grain structure, material integration, and moisture content. Some of those change it a lot like Rosewood or Ebony that integrates silica into the wood or very tight grained wood vs wide grain with the same hardness.

I used to be particular about chip load etc but after burning out three Makitas in a year decided to use setups that are easy on the router. I think that router bit longevity being shortened due to possible overheating is less expensive than replacing routers.

Having the right machine for aluminum milling is vital to have maximum advantage of machine. Ideally, the machine should have 200 IPM feed rate and 18,000 RPM spindle capability. Following are some standard machine settings for aluminum milling

In the same strain tool geometry will effect where your best cut will be as something like a tighter helix changes things like tear out chiploads, cutting forces, and what direction those forces are in.

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I’m not aware of a good one. The closest you’ll get for less than the cost of a kidney is Millalyzer (Link) and it doesn’t have a lot of woods or a way of dealing with most of the below.

In general, yes. This is due to most 3D work requiring stepovers of less than 10%. Any stepover that is less than 50% will have chip thinning which will make your actual chipload less than typically calculated. As an example let’s say that we are cutting with that 1/4" ball-nose (assuming a 2 flute) at 10KRPM with a 0.004" chipload. This would workout to 80IPM (RPM * Flutes * Chipload). However, let’s now say we are only using a 20% stepover. To cut that same 0.004" chipload we need to cut at 100IPM (1.25x). This gets worse the lower you go where 10% requires 133IPM (1.67X) and 8% where most will recommend a 3D finish pass is 147IPM (1.84x).

This article will explain all the factors of and end mill that must be considered before selecting the end mill. Additionally, the article will also cover the machine requirements for milling aluminum and lastly give names of some popular end mills that are perfect to use.

Hope that’s useful. If anyone wants me to go more in depth on any of this let me know but I already am running into text wall territory.

Due to its specific properties, it is necessary to carefully select the end mills otherwise it may damage the work piece. End mills made of carbide are highly durable and has high speed and feed rates. When end mills are coated, they perform better in milling because they provide smooth and slippery surface for quick chips evacuation.

Thank you for bringing that to my attention… I did mess up where I said eighteen hundred rpm instead of 18,000. I need to add a note in that video about that correction. Its hard to give specifics because these numbers are different with every wood type and every bit size and depending on what time of year it is. !/4EM DC in pine was around 140deg F when dialed in while the upcut would run slightly cooler at around 120deg F. but that was in the fall when my shop was not really hot. I would usually take whatever temp it gives me and make small adjustments to see if there are changes or improvements looking for the lowest numbers. Over time you start to get a sense of what it sounds like and looks like when it is dialed in and you will be able to adjust it without the aids.

For the most part if you are using decent size and quality tools in soft material there’s a large range of “usable” chiploads. That’s not to say you can’t get better results digging into it but it’s more complicated than most assume. I feel it’s also worthwhile to learn a lot of these types of things to add to your troubleshooting and starting points. But not to the point of obsessing over the “optimal” vs cutting and making parts.

The types of end mills with different end shapes are used to create different profiles, slotting, and different texture in a work piece. Following are the various end mills used to slot aluminum:

The single flute end mills are designed for applications that require fast and high-volume material removal. They are very versatile and delivers great rough texture. You can use them to mill brass, plastics, aluminum or exotic composites but do not use them on steel.

They are also called full-radius end mills because they have a ball-shape edge. On Aluminum they are used to create 3D contouring, arc grooves and profile milling etc.

@JDog Thanks for the excellent video. (One note: You kept saying “eighteen hundred RPM” instead of 18,000. But we know what you meant.). You don’t mention using a thermal heat gun in the video. That’s an infrared thermometer, I believe. What is the temperature range you’re seeing? What’s an ideal temp for a 1/4" two spiral upcut? (Just as an example.)

Be careful with these. There’s multiple issues but a quick summery would be that they are almost all making machine and material assumptions or giving conservative numbers. That not necessarily wrong, and to create a chart like this there’s not really a lot of options, it can lead to issues though. E.g. if they tested to get the numbers with an industrial machine those numbers will straight up break tools in a deflection limited system. The conservative ones, as long as they aren’t too conservative (rubbing) should be fine to use. You are probably leaving cut quality and tool life on the table but that may be worth the trade if you are doing one offs or short runs. Keep in mind that this will become less true as you get into larger tooling. There’s an assumption that as the tooling gets larger the machine gets more rigid. So you can get into areas where you’re machine limited even on the conservative numbers with larger tools.

Hi Jim - it’s free for 30 or 60 days – don’t recall which. That lets you evaluate it without committing. We can probably arrange a discount code too

Best end mills for aluminumcnc

Usually you can find recommended speeds and feeds for bits at the manufacturers website. Some even have tool databases of all their bits that you can import into your CAD/CAM software. I have tried CNC Cookbook in the past but now I just use the manufacturers recommendation and adjust it if needed.

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Best end mills for aluminumsteel

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RUNNING PARAMETERS If you want to optimize your productivity and achieve optimum machine results, then you need to have the right parameters settings. The settings also help in selection of end mills. The aluminum is indeed an easier material to machine but if you can optimize your machine with the right settings and push it to its maximum limit, you can achieve maximum result out of the machine. There are some general guidelines that you should follow for machining aluminum. For milling cast aluminum alloys, 500-1000 SFM surface footage is recommended. The RPM is based on cutter’s diameter. For wrought aluminum alloys, 800-1500 SFM surface footage is recommended. Following is one of the widely known running parameter to follow.

These end mills are manufactured to improve performance in highly balanced machining centers that have elevated feed rates and elevated RPM. They are used to main precise balance in high velocity machining aluminum up to 33,000 RPM.

Unless there’s something I’m missing this doesn’t need to be an either or. Depending on where you are having issues (high RPM, or cutting force) you can change the cut to get both a decent chipload and something that the router can handle. e.g. Too much force cut the pass depth, too much RPM scale the RPM and feed.

The single flute and 2 or 3 flute end mills are widely used for aluminum. Do not select end mills with flutes greater than 3 otherwise the chips will clog the flute and cause material damage.

Anybody spend the money to buy a Speeds & Feeds Calculator that takes the type of wood into account. There are such huge differences between the hardness of the different species that it wood seems to require one. There is one for sale on CNC Cookbook. Anyone have any experience with it?

There’s also the issue that any calculator to have better than a quick “start here” number would need to know more about the tool than most ask for. Millalyzer is better at this as it’s looking for tool geometry like rake and helix. However, most don’t and even Millalyzer is missing a lot of them. There’s also an issue of getting those numbers as most manufacturers rarely if ever give them out.

UPDATE: Tried it and it worked great. For example, one bit shows a feed rate of 54 ipm for hardwood, 90 ipm for softwood and 126 ipm for MDF/Laminate. The Amana database only has a default preset.

Or is that a pipe dream? Maybe it’s not a calculator per say but a ‘multiplication factor’ of wood based on some standard.

@RockingMallet Joshua, thanks for the heads up. Funny, because I’ve used SPE tools a lot; cheap and easy to get on Amazon (which I hate to use so much but I’m not a patient person and returns are so damn easy…).

EndMillfor aluminum

The more angular the helix angle, the more easily and quickly chips removed. Typically, 35°, 40°, and 45° helix used to mill aluminum for good efficiency due to more aggressive cutting.

This functionally means that the only way to get “optimal” or the “best” settings is to test. Even big production shops with 6 figure machines do and only use calculators or manufacturer data as a starting point. I feel I should point out though that unless you are doing repeated cuts with the same tools and material or are on the margins of deflection/tool strength it may not be worth the time.

MaritoolEnd Mills

Number of flutes are one of the most important factors while selecting the end mill. The end mills are available in 2, 3, 4, and etc. The purpose of end mill is removing the chips from the work piece while milling. The greater the number of flutes in end mill, the softer the material to use for milling. End mills with 2 and 3 flutes are used for working on aluminum. Increase in the number of flutes can create difficulty for effective chips evacuation at high speeds because aluminum produce larger chips. So increasing the flute means smaller chip valley which is why the end mills with high number of flutes should not be used. Normally, 2 flutes end mills are used for aluminum. However, using end mills with 3 flutes will get the job done more efficiently, easily, and will deliver more finishing operations. With the setting of right parameters, 3 flute end mills can also serve as roughers successfully. Besides considering the number of flutes in an end mill, you should also consider other factors like rigidity, operation and required material removal rate that also impacts heavily on the tool’s selection.

There’s also other machine variables like runout that add and subtract from chipload (feed/speed) in multi flute cutters. Resonance and CNC/tool rigidity would be 2 other quick examples that can’t be completely accounted for in most of the calculators.

The end mills are used to create profile, plunging and required pocketing in aluminum. The various properties of end mills decide which material they will mill easily. Besides, the end geometry of an end mill, factors like end mill coating, helix angle, number of flutes etc. play crucial role to get the job done and vice versa.

@cyberreefguru Hey Tom, I’ll give it a try. It’s $14.99 and I’ll provide a review here for all who may want to consider it. It looks like it could have good information and, hell, I stood here and asked for it.

HIGH EFFICIENY MILLING HEM or High Efficiency Milling strategy is become rapidly popular in manufacturing industry. There are CAM programs that include HEM toolpaths. While any machine is capable of performing HEM, it is important that CNC machines should also contain fast processor.

I made a video about this to help explain chip load a bit better in simpler terms. The main take away should be that testing for bit temperatures is the key to getting the perfect chip load. Pause the project a few min into the cut and see how hot the bit is. I use a thermal heat gun to shoot my bit temps. Make adjustments until you have the coolest temps and that will be the best chip load possible. Link to the video. Beginners Guide To Feeds Speeds & Chiploads - YouTube

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Out of my own curiosity, have either of you measured the runout on these. There a few versions we’ve seen of these ER11 router and we can never seem to get any real data on them.

Aluminum is the most loved machined material because of its unique features for machinability and this is why it is most commonly used in manufacturing industry. But the aluminum is not milled using any tool, it requires careful study of its properties and most importantly, an extensive knowledge of tool selection. Understanding the tool requirement by machinist can give them numerous benefits like product pricing, lowering the production cost and make required products with less effort and quality finishing.

Won’t go too much into this for bias reasons. However, I do like that they list chip thinning compensation for the listed stepovers. That will save a lot of people some headache.

We created CNCExplorer for this purpose. Select bit and material and you can optimize your feeds and speeds (including depth of cut). We hope to have an iPhone app out in the near future, but the web app is available now. https://www.cncexplorer.com