So I am playing with aluminum and doing very small details. I lowered all the settings that CC suggested by quite a bit (feeds, depth…) and it still sounds really bad and snapped a bit 3 seconds in. I finally manually set it to 20% feed in Carbide Motion and it seems to be OK. But curious what is the right way to set this and I will admit I only understand a few of these settings.
#112 - 0.063 end
DPP 0.002
Stepover 0.028 <-- Did not change
Spindle 9000 <–Did not change
Feed 5.000
Plunge 0.500
And I set the center just a hair above the work so the first pass would not be too harsh (like a business card thickness instead of paper).
These are small 1.5" discs and just trying a simple gear design as a pocket.
Your chipload is 0.0003 in/tooth. You are guaranteed rubbing at that point and not cutting proper chips. You need to increase your childhood to at least 0.00075 in/tooth (12.5 in/min) or better yet, to 0.001 (18 in/min). Aluminum is soft and gummy and you need to get a certain bite of the endmill into it or you will break endmills due to rubbing.
Yep, no worries. Chipload or chip per tooth (CPT) is the radial depth of cut that the endmills engages every time a tooth hits the material. Think of it as how much material the endmill cuts off every time it rotates. So a chipload of 0.001" means that is you rotate at 9000 RPM and have 2 flutes, you cut 18 inches per minute (90000.0012).
For aluminum, it’s safe to start around 0.00075" CPT for smaller endmills (less than 1/8") and 0.001" CPT for larger endmills (1/8" or greater).