Side milling or end milling? HSS cutter?

Side milling uses more of the mill cutting surface and not the most expensive part. Only need to end mill on thicknesses that cannot be easily side milled. Choose your standard surface cutting speed (material of cutter) and the spindle speed will depend on the cutter diameter.

Feed will depend on the number of flutes and depth of feed will depend on power, after that lot has been determined ( but not more than a third of the cutter diameter).

Don’t try to climb mill unless minimal cutting depth as a finishing clean-up cut.

Once the end of an endmill has become blunt, a lot of cutting is still possible using the side edges of the cutter. Straightening the edges of plates is a perfect example of this. All you need is some way of holding the plate flat so the edges can be machined. It is also useful to use different parts of the cutter sides to even up the wear.

Doug

Garry, in the"Model Engineers Handbook" by "Tubal Cain" (T D Walshaw) for profiling with an end mill he states that the best results are when the cutter – diameter D is cutting a vertical depth (plate thickness ) of D and a maximum width of cut into the material of D/4. He also suggest that the minimum vertical depth of cut should be 0.006" and the maximum width of cut should be no more than engages 2 teeth on the cutter. The cutter diameter that you will use is more determined by what the mill can cope with in terms of power ,speed and rigidity. I've just been profiling 2 steel plates 6mm thick, stacked on top of each other (12mm total thickness) so that they came out the same sizes and my small mill was happy with 3mm passes (vertical height) and 1mm width of cut at 1000 rpm using a 6mm dia, 3 flute carbide cutter.

Keith