I’ve recently done some cutting into cherry wood, with a 1/4 UC endmill, at 1/2 DOC and 60% stepover. Calculations seemed to have an OK chipload. I got tons of chatter at pretty much any feed rate. I want to be efficient, but also dont want to rattle my machine apart with chatter.
Any best practices for DOC to bit size? I had read that you should go no deeper than 3x diameter of the bit. I know this is basically scratching the surface for tooling and can be a HUGE topic, but just looking to see if im doing something egregiously wrong, while searching for efficient machining.
Vast subject. Huge amounts to learn and many different approaches. Material, feed speed, climb or conventional milling and so on. I started out testing every material I was going to cut and listened for any sound that suggested the machine was straining. Initially when starting to learn, I always used 1/2 the diameter of the tool as my initial depth of cut and tried not to have 100% engagement of the tool as it was fed into the material.
Chatter is evidence of something wrong because good machining does not produce chatter. Loose tooling, assembly faults in the machine, bad workholding, poor collet, wrong collection of feedrate, material, tooling etc. There is a vast amount to read and I like articles like the linked one, for their simple and complete explanation of many of the possible faults. Bear in mind that these articles are primarily written for industrial operations and people who work as machinists for a living. A lot of what is written may not be directly applicable to hobby CNC machines but it does not take away from the utility.
As you said, lots of info and lots of ideas on how to do it right. Walnut cuts great, and differs from piece to piece depending on density. You can reduce the speed of your cut in CM to see if it improves your chatter. Of course that will slow the job some as changing stepover will do the same.