Any reviews of the #205E "essential" endmills?

I’m in need of some new endmills for wood cutting. At less than half the price of the #201, the #205E is tempting. Has anyone tried the #205E? Any reviews? A search of the forum came up empty, which surprised me.

Thanks in advance,

Jim

I’ve had no issues on mine. It’s 2 flute instead of 3 flute.

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Thanks for the reply. Would you say cut quality is about the same?

I have several 3rd party upcut bits and have used the #205E in the tool path because it was easier than creating a custom tool.

I have been using the #251 down cut bit a lot lately and I like it. The down cut has advantages over the upcut bits mainly that the top edge is not left ragged.

Hey there is no cheap way to do this hobby between the machine, material and time. If you average out the cost of a tool by the individual tool paths even the most expensive bits are not much per use in a project. So dont be penny wise and pound foolish. Right now every penny counts but dont get carried away. The #205E may be a very good tool but I will be using what I got until they dull.

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The 205E is an import cutter and at the selling price is probably from China or maybe Taiwan. It’s perfectly adequate and I’d rate it as high as any cutter I’ve used from China. For use on wood I can drive it pretty hard with my HDM with no issues, so I’d say it’s more than adequate for any of the other Shapeokos. For the price C3D charges they are a very good value as I think you’d have a hard time finding anything better that’s cheaper.
You can think of it as a general purpose bit you’ll use for efficiency removing material for pocketing operations especially. It’s an upcut which means it will give you smoother cuts at the bottom of the material, but more ragged at the top compared to a downcut bit. You can also drive an upcut harder in most situations since it’s more efficiently removing chips.

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