Now let's imagine that your spindle can't run faster than 10 000rpm. We can still increase the feed rate by using a 3-flutes end mill and keep a constant chip load:

Aluminum milling feeds and speedscalculator

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Another technique I use frequently is rough conventional cutting vertical walls in aluminium. If you use one of the free cutting 90 degree shoulder insert mills such as Dapra there is nowhere for the chip to go when climb cutting a vertical wall and so the chip gets forced between the wall and the insert. This can cause material smearing and heat the part up from the friction (potential thermal distortion). Conventional cutting scoops the chip out and ejects it away from the wall. With a good free cutting insert you should only notice a 5 - 10% increse in tool pressure.

Chip load, also called “feed per tooth”, is the thickness of material that is fed into each cutting edge as it moves through the work material.

Aluminum milling feeds and speedschart

As illustrated above, there are mainly two bad spots that you want to avoid. The first one happens when you reduce your spindle speed too much relative to the feed rate. Doing so, you’re forcing the flutes of your end mill to cut off too much material, which can lead to unwanted vibration or worse, a broken tool.

Let's illustrate this concept and imagine you want to cut plywood with a 6mm 2-flutes end mill. In our case, the recommended chip load for plywood is around 0,1mm/tooth (cf. the Advanced chip load table at the end of this article).

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If you are not yet familiar with your machine, we compiled a starter chip load table with lower values. They are intentionally low to help you get confident with the machine no matter the type of engagement, the hardness of your material, etc...

Conventional cutting will tend to pull the material towards the cutter as the forces increase through the cut as the chip thickens.

End Millspeeds and feedscalculator

On a climb cut the thickest part of the chip is made first, as the cutter advances the cutting edge impacts ahead of the direction of feed. The chip then thins out as the cut is completed.

Milling speeds and feedscalculator

I conventional cut with solid carbide in Al if I am forced down that road and have even done so in Ti. But it is HARD on the cutters especially in tougher/harder materials.

On the whole climb cutting allows you to balance the cutting forces and achieve a more accurate cut. There are exceptions.

Before diving into numbers and values, you need to be aware that the following variables will heavily influence the quality of your cuts and the achievable chip load on the same machine.

Thermodynamic implications are more important for people in the aerospace machining world because many aeropace materials are "heat resistant", Aluminium, Titanium , Inconel and high chromium content stainless steel(324 - 348)are all heat resistant materials, i.e they do not conduct heat well.

When climb cutting the cross sectional area (and therefore the volume)of the chip is at its maximum when the majority of the heat is being generated, at the initial impact and shear. Maximum heat build up is just behind the cutting edge and slightly back on the chip side of the cutting edge. The higher the chip volume at this time the more heat will naturally flow into the chip and not the part, which can lead to distortion.

Physical/geometric implications are that a climb cut will have a tendancy to "hook" any corner or cusp and either have an unbalanced load surge or set up unwanted vibrations (chatter) in the system.

Aluminum millingspeed chart

Hence, getting your feeds & speeds right simply means finding the sweet spot where your tool is spinning at the perfect speed relative to its moving speed inside the material. That sweet spot can mean different things depending on your goal: achieving the best surface finish, machining your parts the fastest, or maximizing your tool life.

If you're using end mills that you bought at Mekanika, you can access the pre-parametered feeds and speeds for Fusion360 here on the product pages.

Aluminum milling feeds and speedspdf

Always clamp your workpiece in the best possible way. A loose workpiece will vibrate while being cut and cause a bad surface finish. If you are not sure about your clamping, use wood screws to attach your workpiece in many points to the spoiler board. It is not the fanciest clamp in the world, but it is fast and efficient.

An end mill is a cutting tool and with time, it will eventually get dull. As it gets worn out, you will need to take it easier and reduce the feedrate to keep a good surface finish. You can also just replace it or resharpen it.

As the above implies conventional cutting is best done with HSS cutters as you can grind the edge sharper than carbide and thus reduce the above effect, you are also going slower so you are generating less heat.

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So again, for these heavier milling operations, you will need to use a lower feedrate to allow your mill to stay cool, or simply reduce the depth of cut.

sometimes on plastic parts we climb mill the ruff pass and conventional machine the finish pass does a nicer job on the finish...also on chamfer milling passes it seems to wipe the pickup off the edge on my spring pass

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A machined free standig wall will therefore tend to thicken towards the top (the flexible section of the wall) if you climb cut or thin out towards the top if you conventional cut.

The harder the piece, the more deflect your end mill will bear. This will cause chatter and vibrations. Be patient when milling hard material and use smaller steps or lower your feedrate.

Removal of an abrasive/hard skin is one. Waterjet can help on some matrials but nothing can be done about the nasty skin on Titanium extrusion and forged block. As mentioned above, with a conventional cut, you are entering virgin clean the material rather than constantly slamming into the nasty skin if you use a conventional cut.

Let’s define an arbitrary feedrate of 2 000 mm/min. Using the former equation, we find that the spindle has to rotate at 10 000 rpm to achieve the proper chip load:

On the other side of the graphic, if you reduce the feed rate too much relative to spindle speed, the flutes of your end mill will start rubbing the material instead of cutting nice chips. This action will make your tool overheat, and thus soften. Its sharp edges will become dull and if you keep cutting with dull edges and you will start to see a very deteriorated surface finish on your material.

A good example of this would be trimming the ends of extrusion with a standig wall or leg. There is little or no flexiblity along the length of the part so you don't have to worry about sucking the part in and undercutting, so a good candidate for conventional cutting

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Climb cutting, because of the initial high force impact followed by a falling off of force as the chip thins will have a tendancy to push the material away from the cutter.

Having glanced through the above thread and posts I think belearner might benefit from a general overview rather than indivdual examples, so here goes.

The parameter that links these concepts and that is widely used as a standard metric to determine optimal feeds & speeds is called chip load.

An important factor to consider while reading these tables is the tool diameter. A larger end mill will indeed be able to handle a larger chip load.

This problem is magnified with insert cutters which generally have a nose a few thou. in radius (up front sharp free cutting inserts are an exception as mentioned above). So conventional cutting in tough heat resistant materials with inserts is a bit like trying to pierce the material surface with a ball bearing at an angle. The forces and and heat generated are great and the insert will rapidly break down.

On a conventional cut the thinnest part of the chip is formed first,as the cutter advances the cutting edge impacts behind the direction of feed, and the chip thickens through the cut.

We do some hogmilling convetional on plates of 304 st that have been plasma cut this gets the tool under the hard surface of the burnt edges rather than cutting into that hard edge.

During some milling operations, more than ¼th of your tool’s circumference “touches” the material during the milling. As a result, the end mill can’t cool down properly and tends to overheat easily.

Feedrates are found using the formula given earlier in this document, but Fusion360 embeds a very handy chip load calculator which gives you the mill’s chip load for given feed and speed.

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When maximum speed of the machine spindle less than value of recommended milling conditions, adjust conditions by calculation as follows.

On a conventional cut large amounts of heat are being generated when the chip is thin. Frictional forces (which are converted to heat) are much greater as you push the cutting edge through the material at greater depth and the chip thickness increases. This can be OK in steel or heat conductive materials but can be a real problem in heat resistant materials as the excess heat will bleed into the part, again risking distortion.

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This is a great starting point if you are a novice. When you are feeling more confident, slowly increase the chip load towards the “Advanced chip load table” values.

Based on this knowledge, we can now use tables that will allow us to calculate our feeds & speeds and achieve an optimal chip load for any given material.

Understanding how feeds and speeds work is critical if you want to improve your CNC skills. It will help you to optimize your machining speeds, to obtain a better surface finish and most importantly to have a longer tool life. Here's an overvie of what this article goes through:

As stated earlier in the article, we recommend that you start by setting the actual feedrate of your machine below the value from the table and gradually increase it. In general, you will find that your optimal feeds & speeds will be determined from experience or trial-and-error. For instance, for most materials, you can typically set the spindle speed between 15000-25000rpm and adjust your feed rate to obtain nice results with your machine.

Aluminum milling feeds and speedstable

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Bestaluminum milling feeds and speeds

These are "special" circumstances and generally the choice of whether to use a conventional or climb cut is more to do with the dynamics of the chip formation.

A general rule of thumb is to take passes that are around half the diameter of your mill. But remember, as mentioned above: some more complex or hard materials requires lower depth of cut (typical examples are aluminium and  plexiglas...).

Similarly, we suggest you slowly increase the depth of your cuts while doing these tests. Indeed, excessive depth of cut will result in tool deflection (see this article to understand why that can be problematic).

Depending on how deep you want your end mill to go inside the material, you will have to adapt your feed rate to spare it.

These concepts can be visually summarized on a graphic, where the feedrate is plotted against the spindle rotational speed, and which helps us to identify 6 different zones.

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Based on this mathematical relation, we observe that if we want to increase the feed rate to cut that plywood faster, we will have to increase the spindle rotational speed as well to keep a constant chip load :

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