I’m ready to start machining some 3D parts and need to acquire some ball nose mills. Would some of you folks recommend some basic “starter” mills to acquire. I was thinking of something like a 1/4" an 1/8", etc., but when I start shopping, I see so many options from flute counts, tip radius, etc. I’m mostly carving wood right now and nothing with too terribly tight radii . Was just thinking there ought to be a few standard “go to” tools that would be recommended.
Thanks
Well, there’s a vendor who has a page of them:
https://shop.carbide3d.com/collections/cutters/ball
I’ve been pleased with them, but arguably not unbiased.
If you want to try a less expensive set, these have been working well for me in soft woods. I leave .040" - .050" after the roughing cut for these to do the finish cut with 10% stepover.
And they are so cheap, if you accidentally destroy one, it doesn’t matter.
Yes, I was thinking cheap since I am new to 3D and may end up breaking some things. Should I just get !/8" or do I need multiple sized cutters. Again, just carving wood (mostly hardwoods) in various thickness with not too tight curves.
also depends on how fine you want to go in terms of detail
something like Red Pin Terrain carve I cut with a 0.5 mm radius tapered endmill (the tapered part makes it much stronger so you can do pretty high F&S), and it’s so detailed you can see individual buildings in the wood. But it takes forever 
Maybe rough rule of thumb: go half the diameter of the smallest detail you want to get
You might also consider bullnose endmills. Ball nose can’t remove material as efficiently as flat or bullnose-- too much center.
Bullnose have advantages over flat end in many circumstances as there are no corners to break, and will get you to finish in many cases. For finer detail, follow up with ball end may be needed. Bull nose cost about the same as or a bit more than ball end, but remove a lot more material and can handle heavier cuts like a square end. You avoid some tool changes, as well.
For most wood applications, two flute is a good choice.
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