Milling with bottom vs milling with side?

[CarbideBob]

If side milling you could use a large cutter to eliminate any flexing.
Maybe even HSS for such a small cut.
I mount a 6 inch side milling cutter in my shell mill adapter. These cutters look like circular saw blades.

Load/unload ergonomics is going to be the key to making money here as the cutting time is only going to be at most a couple of seconds
Even how far you retract the tool is going to have a big influence on cycle time. (unless of course you've got one of those nifty 2000 IPM rapid machines) I'd look at putting a bunch of parts on the table as starting/stopping the spindle for each part is going to kill ya.

This job begs for automatic loading but I'm guessing it doesn't have a lot of money in it. We hit a wall at about 300 pcs per hour when manually loading as this is about the limit one person can handle,

Bob

[DareBee]

Geof (and others)

Start with a used flywheel press (they are either really cheap or free for the taking) and 30-40k for the rest of the machine.
The operators can go and do other profitable jobs when the run is done.
Accounting work to be done by others - just a suggested solution.

I have also made machines for parts like this that were a little slower (2-3 seconds) that did the job by broaching. You could double the time and reduce the costs by having manual load/unload.