Need Machine End Mill settings for pine wood

Anybody have good machine settings for cutting pine wood using 2 flute 1/16 and 1/32 End mills?

Thanks,
Tony

HiTonz…depends on spindle speed, flute length, stepover, and cut depth of course.
My spindle runs 10k rpm and my single flute 1/16th end mill seems happy at 300mm/m for a 0.5mm deep cut (and plunge rate too). I have pushed it harder, but I’m usually looking for surface quality and clean edges. With a parallel cut 50% stepover (after the initial pass) I’d use 400mm/m - maybe more.
Any help?

With a bit of that size I would only recommend 40% stepover 50% seems a bit much for a small bit. With 40 you can increase your speed slightly and also get a bit smoother cut

I’ve got NEMA 23 Stepper motors and a 300w 24v spindle that they list with it. The specs don’t mentioned what the rpms are for it. Any body know? Easel defaults at 14k but i’m not sure If that’s what I get. I may be only getting 10k as what Mark mentioned he uses. I played around with .04in depth per pass, 60in/m feed rate and 40% step over. Went 0.078 depth in a oval shape 5.5" x 10" at 35% project completion in 6 hours. That’s like 18 hours to complete this project. Does that sound right? There is more detail deeper into the carve but after 6 hours, I had to go to bed… The full project is .25 inch deep when complete. This is with the 1/16" bit size.

I’m lookin’ for high speed, not to clean and trying to avoid breaking a End Mill bit if I hit a knot. At least at this stage. I’m not sure if I’m going to have to go to a 1/32" bit or not until I see what the 1/16" bit looks like. I’m hoping not.

Nick’s right - 50% stepover = rough finish, but I’ll be cleaning up with a subsequent waterline cut.

I have possibly the same 300w 24v spindle does 10k rpm max, seems to have an internal regulator as it also does 10k rpm on 48v. I have the performance graphs for it here somewhere and will look them out.

18 hrs seems really high for a .25" project, but caution is wise. Did you do a roughing cut first? I’d expect that to rough out (1/8th") in about 4 hr and parallel/waterline (1/16") finish in about another 3.

I posted a project over in Show & Tell that’s about the same area but 20mm (0.8") deep, that took about 12 hrs. I’m doing a deeper 35mm (~1.4") oval version of it right now, 330mm x 135mm, more detail as it gets lower, 1/8" single flute roughing cut expected to take 15 hrs. And you bet I’ll be going to bed too! Tomorrow I’ll follow with about another 4.5 hrs of waterline and 2.5 hrs parallel using a 1/16th bullnose. That’s 22 hrs all up, but your setup may be quite different.

Again, I’m not sure if that helps…you could post your artwork and I could see what times MeshCam comes up with?

This project is to big to for just a 1/16" end mill. To much to cut and not a whole lot of detail to justify it. Think I will work on tool change technique. I got 1/4" end mill coming in the mail. I’m thinking the trickiest part is going to be making sure the bit extension measurement, coming out of the spindle, is the same for both bits.

You could always try using an 1/8" ball bit they are usually great for most low detail cutting jobs