2mm endmill help

[BufferParticipant @buffer]

Hi

I have just been looking through this as I need to cut a couple of bits out of 2.4mm mild steel sheet with a carbide 3mm 4 flute end mill. I have an 1800rpm top speed on my mill an SX3 which is why I am asking as most of you on here are using much faster spindles. I very rarely use such small cutters and I don't really want to start snapping them. It's a slot I would be cutting using the full width. Can anyone give me some idea what sort of depth in mm I should be cutting and at what sort of feed in mm/min? Does it matter if I go shallow depth and feed a bit quicker or deeper and slower feed etc.

Thanks.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Top play safe with a light chip load use say 0.01mm per tooth and do it in 4 passes of 0.6mm deep.

1800 x 4 x 0.01 = 72mm/min feed.

Edited By JasonB on 05/02/2021 20:41:09

[Anonymous]

I looked up what I did a few months ago on the CNC mill with a 3 flute carbide cutter in hot rolled steel cutting a 4mm wide slot 2.38mm deep. I ran at 5000rpm, 120mm/min feed, full width when roughing and 0.48mm deep per pass. Coming down to 1800rpm and going up to 4 flutes gives a feedrate of 57.6mm/min. Seems I was pussyfooting around.

I hate using small cutters on a manual mill. It's only too easy to momentarily overfeed and then ping!

Andrew

[BufferParticipant @buffer]

Ok many thanks I will give it a go at about that and hope it survives.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

APT is a good firm in the UK supplying carbide cutters and all other tooling.

[Author]

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