I know it sounds cheap, but I have never found anything to work better on AL than good ol WD-40. As fat as tooling, there are allot of advancements in indexable. Iscar and others have new inserts with polished faces and ground edges. I think the smallest diamater is about .500 though.
I used to run a .750 2 flute at 6000RPM and anywhere between 60-100IPM, .600 deep, with about a .200 curf (width of cut) in cast aluminum stepping down a wall. On the same part, ran a 2Inch face mill 6000RPM, 280+IPM with 4 or 6 flutes. |