I’m removing about 1/6" thickness from a 3/4" MDF board to recreate the fence on a Bosch router table. It’ll be about 12.5" wide x 3 3/4" tall.
I know the default depth per pass is .015 and feed rate of 60, but that’s a tiny amount each pass…and it estimates over 2 hours for a pretty simple and minimal plane job.
How much can I increase the depth per pass without damaging the bit or MDF board?
The McFly is not intended for bulk material removal.
Some folks have used it thus (usually removing four of the cutting blades), but it would be better to use a #201 or some other endmill with cutting flutes intended to evacuate chips
For increasing feeds and speeds see:
MDF is tougher than you think. MDF is made of saw dust and GLUE. The glue is the toughest part. The sawdust and glue are mixed together and then pressed into sheets. In some ways hardwood is easier to cut than MDF. Plus hardwood is less hazardous to you than MDF. You dont want to breath in the MDF glue that gets made into fine dust. Another aspect of cutting down mdf is you loose the pressed flat surface and you are left with a really absorbent surface. So if you take off the top surface of MDF be sure to put something on it. Polyurethane or another finish would be best. If you use water based products likely you will get a bumpy lumpy surface on MDF. The porous surface soaks up the water based products and causes the sawdust to swell. You would have to sand it down and seal it 2-3 times to get a smooth surface. Oil based products can still swell the wood fibers but not nearly like water based surfaces. If this is for a router table another choice would be formica or similar surface. That seals out the moisture and gives you a smooth slick surface to slide boards on for routing. Maybe some good quality plywood or solid wood would be a better choice. MDF will work but it has workarounds you have to deal with.