I ordered an Amana 45525, which is a 3-wing 1-1/8” surfacing bit. I went to their chart for feeds and speeds, but it didn’t tell me much. I did their math formula for feed rate and I got roughly 108 IPM, and they say that’s for cutting at 1/4” deep! That seems like a lot to me, yet again, I’ve only had my Shapeoko for a few months. If anyone could give me suggestions or tips on it, I’d greatly appreciate it because I’m lost.
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You want to take off a thin layer each time or you’ll just run out of spoilboard pretty fast.
I would start at 50-60 IPM and 50% stepover with about 0.05" depth of cut, listen to how that sounds and inspect the surface finish. Go faster, deeper, wider from there depending on how much your machine likes it.
Also, before you try to use a surfacing bit that wide, tram your machine square or you’ll get railway track, see @julien 's ebook if you’re not familiar with tramming
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I have a Whiteside 6120 that is similar. I run at 80ipm, 0.01 inch doc with 50 percent stepover. Whiteside suggested 100 ipm.
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I have a Nomad. Just got Whiteside 6120 and I cannot figure out how to use it… before making the cut, machine goes to zero itself and thus offsets the manual zero that I have inputed. Any ideas how to get around that? I hope I am making sense…
Thank you!
The Nomad cannot use endmills which do not have structure at the center which will interact with the tool length sensor.
@WillAdams, couldn’t I “trick” it by machining a small spacer cap for the tool length sensor? I know it’s a bit ghetto but could that work?
I dont have a Nomad so I do not know if the BitSetter can be disabled On a Shapeoko you can unclick it in the configuration but even though a Nomad uses the same controller not sure if you could disable the BitSetter like a Shapeoko.
If you cannot disable the BitSetter on the Nomad then not sure how you could use a bit like the Whiteside because the bit is hollow in the center and will not hit a Shapeoko BitSetter button. Maybe you could cut a plug to fit into the center of the Whiteside that is level with the bottom of the of the cutting teeth.
I have a surfacing bit that has the same issue with the shapeoko and the bitsetter. I use a thin business card to cover the button on the bitsetter which allows the surfacing bit to press against the button without issue. I am not sure if the same thing will work on the Nomad but I don’t see why not.
@gdon_2003, I was thinking to, like I said, machine a little thing to put on top of the tool length sensor 
I’ll try to do this when I have time and post the result… hopefully it’s not a broken something…
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