Using a larger endmill in the Nomad?

I have been using the .125 inch ball end-mill for my carving projects(Medium Hardness Balsa and Paulownia) and remembered I had purchased a .25" ER-11 Collet and Nut. I would like to try using one of the .25 x.25 End-mills that I recently purchased to cut some projects with. Will this speed up my cut times? Also When running jobs I have been utilizing the Carbide Auto Toolpath function in Meshcam to set up . (the 1/4" endmills are not listed in the Auto toolpath function, even though I have the other cutters listed in my tool crib in Meshcam.

Yes, the 1/4" endmills have a greater material removal rate (MRR), but the Nomad spindle has only so much torque, so they can’t be used save in materials which are more easily cut — renshape is one.

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Curious to see how the Carbide auto toolpath feeds and speeds turns out for the 0.250" mill - I haven’t used that function in MeshCAM. If you are doing face milling or flat surfaces at all I would say the 0.250" end mill is a fair bit faster and leaves a better surface finish than the 0.125" but keep an ear out for lugging or chatter while using it, particularly during plunge operations - as Will says the Nomad torque is limited to spin a bit of this size.

I had a lot of success cutting wood with a 6mm endmill, it looks like a beast in the little nomad spindle :slight_smile: One of the Carbide 3D guys said it would work and it did. Really saved me some time with the roughing cuts.

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+1 to the comments so far—it only works well with a light step-over or really shallow cut, or in softer materials like polyurethane tooling boards (renshape) or “soft” plastics (HDPE, LDPE, UHMW, ABS, acetal…) because of the torque limitations. Otherwise the chatter & stall factor are just too much of a pain in the rear to balance for :wink:

The materials I am cutting are relatively soft, Medium Heavy balsa and Paulownia are soft compared to Renshape. Both woods are easily dented with a fingernail. When I tried it on the renshape, my finger nail bent.

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