endmill for wood

[motionindo]

what's the best endmill for wood? Is it HSS, Carbide or PCD? for me HSS only last in minutes before it started to smoke and Carbide lasted longer but I have to clean it everytime as the wood particle sticks on it.

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[comandojon]

We use solid carbide compression type bits for most wood.
You have to look at chip load . Faster rpm on the spindle isn't always better. The goal to have the waste from cutting be small chips of wood not fine dust. I usually run a 4 hp spindle at 14k rpm and 320 inches per min with a 1/4" diameter 2 flute solid carbide compression bit.

You can find chip load calculators online.
Just input wood type , bit type, diameter and it will give you feed rate and rpm .
Jon

[comandojon]

What type of wood are you cutting ? And what size bit feed rate rpm nd number of passes?

[motionindo]

thanks for the advice I guess I have to learn about chip load etc.
I cut teak wood and hard wood with 12mm solid carbide feed is 250mm at 15k rpm. with a 2.2kw chinese spindle. I think there must be something wrong here.

[comandojon]

Are you trying to cut in one pass?

That little spindle would take 3 passes to do 19mm of thickness

[motionindo]

step down at 3mm so todo 19mm = 19/3 = 6.3 passes and my step over is 35%. or is it my spindle is very2 poorly made? it sounds like it is under power or something

[comandojon]

Are you trying to cut in one pass?

That little spindle would take 3 passes to do 19mm of thickness

[comandojon]

What does your inverter say for rpm or HZ?
6 passes is a lot of passes

[comandojon]

We use bits like this one for solid wood.
CNC Spiral Flute Plunge Solid Carbide by Amana Tool

[motionindo]

it says 250Hz I can go up to 400Hz which is 24k rpm.
I just calculate my chipload : feed 256/15k*2 = 0.008533333 is this correct? all is in metric

[comandojon]

Here is a chip load chart to look at its in inches etc. you need to get the chip load down to like .004 that's per flute . My guess is your bit is getting plugged with fine dust.

[ger21]

You're cutting way too slow. Try 2500-4000mm/min at 15,000rpm.
With teak, you must use carbide, as HSS will dull quickly from the silica in the teak.

[motionindo]

I'm guessing that Gerry is right, I'm cutting it too slow but my chinese 2.2kw I don't think can stand at that speed. Do I need to replace it with an Italian 7.5kw spindle? Btw I've had it with the chinese spindle I guess I got what I paid for.

[ger21]

If you're only cutting 6mm deep, either the tool is very dull, or possibly your VFD settings are incorrect. You should have plenty of power to make that cut.

[motionindo]

Ger the last time I tried cutting 6mm the spindle motor just stop due to lack of power and now I'm cutting 3mm in depth but still sometimes it bogs down during the cut sounded like it is not having enough power, maybe you are right about the vfd but I use hitachi vfd instead of the chinese one and had that for awhile and it was running ok up till recently, could the hitachi vfd gone bad?

[motionindo]

I'm running 2.2kw water cooled chinese spindle with hitachi x200 vfd, does anyone have the settings for x200?

[motionindo]

I got these settings:
X200 settings:
A001: 00
A002: 02
A003: 400Hz
A004: 400Hz
A061 400
A062 200
A082: 230V
A151 200
A152 400
A153 0
A154 100
A155 00

B012: 10

H003: 2.2KW
H004: 2 poles

I'll test it to see if it still bogs down due to lack of torque.
Btw what kind of spindle do you have Ger?

[ger21]

I use a Porter Cable 690 controlled by a Super PID

[diegope]

hi. i am strating to experiment with some millign on teak. which is the most basic, non expensive spinlde you would recommend to start the job? i have no experince with milling...just starting, so i want to go from a basic setup up. if you could send link with actual references and brands it'd be great. thanks