I did 0.5 DOC with 18k rpm and around 170-180 IPM using the beast from IDC Woodcraft.
I’ve now broken 2 IDC Beasts, one of them literally 10 minutes ago, running at 140ipm at .25doc and .2 stepover with VFD in hard maple so I’m curious what you’re doing different from me. Luckily they have the 90 day no questions asked return policy.
I did this on polar and aromatic cedar. They are definitely not as hard as maple 
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Not an IDC bit but a roughing bit, doing .75doc / 16k / 155ips, it was yelling a bit and will need some tuning. Torqued hard enough to turn my work surface. 
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I just went and checked out Gwizard and it’s recommending really high numbers. After the issues with my IDC bits I’m willing to try anything to get this figured out. After reading different horribly dry explanations of technical feeds and speeds I’m thinking the reason my bits broke was I may actually have been going too slow and the bits were getting too hot. I’ve got really good dust extraction so I wasn’t seeing what the chips were looking like. I’m going to go ahead and give Gwizard the reins and try their recommendations and see what happens with some less expensive bits.
Bob Warfield, the guy behind G-Wizard wrote up two guest blog posts at:
https://carbide3d.com/blog/feed-and-speeds-part-1/
https://carbide3d.com/blog/feed-and-speeds-part-2/
as well as many, many pages on his CNC Cookbook sight.
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What rpm have you used?
HOLY CRAP!!! I’ve been going WAYYYY too slow! I just did a test in pine with a generic roughing bit at 240IPM, 175IPM plunge, .25DOC, 22000RPM, .125 stepover with ramping and it went like BUTTER! No screaming, no chatter, just smooth as can be. GAME CHANGER! Lots more testing to come.
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Damn those are crazy numbers. Good job!
I did some testing and cannot get anywhere near what you guys are reporting , I have carbides VFD.
Trying to run 14k 170-75 with .25 doc I just crashed
14k 125/80 did not sound good and nor did 80/40.
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I had better success on the test and was able to up the speed to 160 ipm manually. But I can’t remember my DOC on this code as I accidentally overwrote it.
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Is this Carbide’s VFD or another one?
I can’t get anywhere near the speeds you are getting without issues/crashes.
I am using Carbide’s VFD.
What’s your stepover? I don’t go higher than 60% diameter. And for doing contour cutouts, I only use a 1/8th inch endmill.
Did you tighten all your screws? My SP5 had loose screws everywhere, especially in the couplers. I only noticed that they were loose when I started to push the machine and had issues.
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Pretty conservative, but i’ll check it again. it’s for sure less than 40%.
Everything is tight, i just went over the whole machine again a few weeks ago as i had some slippage.
I’ve been underwhelmed by the VFD since i bought it, have always felt like it was lacking power.
From what I gather the vfd’s have enough power as there isn’t even much running at its top end of 24k. It’s not being able to push the machine to 600+ipm that is a problem. Everything I run from gwizard has our ipm pegged with plenty of spindle overhead.
If the vfd isn’t feeling right maybe ask support for some tests to make sure it’s accurately performing.
I think there are a ton of other factors here to compare.
Feed
Plunge
Stepover
Rpm
Wood hardness
Bit diameter
Bit brand
Length of bit
Spindle brand/power
And a bunch of other things that we aren’t all posting.
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I tried speeding my cut up to 110 at .25 doc and it quit a lot of the squiling. But im cutting pine. It still does it depending on which way its going (across the grain withe the grain)
. Seams like it does it more as its going with the grain.
When I used setting from the Gwizard program it made a lot of difference in my cuts. I kept it conservative and on some cuts it was still near maxing out feeds, and some others seemed a little slow in comparison but if I tried to speed up I got squealing and chatter. So I’m definitely a big fan of the program now. Probably will buy it when the trial is up. I cut out 8 small crosses last night from hard maple with the 201 bit in about 10 minutes.
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Wow this is amazing! I guess i’ll be bumping up my speeds!
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