Dont order any sets. Period. Tooling is a daily issue and you can have the exact tooling you need in-house the following day if not two days free. Set's suck. You will have tooling you may never need, may have to find a use for, and there is very little cost savings in sets.
Just order the tooling you need for the job at hand when your ready to run the job and plan a day in to the production.
Listen to Jim, if you're not using O-Flute for plastics your using the wrong bit. The spiral O-Flute will work better than the straight O-Flute.
I sell mostly 1/8", 3/16" with 1/4" diameter being third. No sense buying sets because you will probably never need more than one or two bits for shape cutting.
Calculate your chip load to get the best performance and life from your tooling. It can be hard to run low power machines fast enough for optimum chip load, so small diameter bits may work best (although they will have limited depth of cut and strength). https://cutter-shop.com/chip-load-ch...15%E2%80%9D%20
With plastics, heat control is essential, so chip load, as mentioned by Kevin, is really critical. Chips throw off the heat. But with plastics, you have to really find the sweet spot so that the chips themselves don't get so hot that they rebond to the material after the tooling passes. It's a...dance...
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
Run a lot of plastic here. Cast/extruded acrylic, solid surface, HDPE,.. my advice is to have a spare tool and start at the extreme high end of you chipload/feed/speed calc. Dial your plunge/ramp rates WAY up. Typically most with plastic just run way to slow. Oflute has never been critical for me. We run a lot of 2 flute up/down spirals and ball nose, 2 flute straight, and 3 flute tapered spirals with .0625 and .03125 tips. The real issue is running your feeds super fast in plastic. If you poke along your sunk.
For hard plastics like acrylic I use a 3 flute low helix vortex bit.
Along the lines of Mark's post, if the machine can't zip along horizontally at a high rate, then the tooling RPM will have to go down to stay within chip load and not create excessive heat. That's dependent on the actual CNC machine's capabilities. Again, "it's a dance".
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
An internet search for end mills has so many…. I ordered a starter set with the machine that’s coming, but am starting to think about my applications (brass sheet) and what companies to lean toward.
A guy named “Fromme” has a bunch of YouTube videos for new folks, and showed Amana as better than Whiteside. By that he meant higher quality steel in the shank (didn’t compare the carbide edges). He also didn’t discuss wood vs soft metals.
Does your preference for Amana apply to brass too?
Is Amana your choice because it performs better? Costs less? Breaks less? Dulls more slowly?
Are there other folks with CNC experience with suggestions for companies to seek out (or avoid)?
I do like Amana for plastics and non-ferrous metals...ToolsToday is generally where I've bought those. While I like and use some Whiteside tooling (compression bits generally) for wood, Amana has a very broad line of quality tools that are more specialized. And you do want tooling that's designed for the material you are going to cut.
Honestly, for general wood cutting and aside from the compression tools, I'm not really picky about brand and have no issue sourcing tooling via Amazon and EBay at attractive prices. But for specialties...I try to buy for specification and that generally leads to brands like Amana.
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...