3/4" Baltic Birch in a single pass?

Hey Travis,

I think if you really want to drive the bit more faster through the wood, I would take a strong spindle and a larger bit diameter, and make a roughing pass first and a finishing pass after that.

Here is a video where they mill with 110 ipm, but it’s a 8 mm (5/16") roughing bit and it’s black locust, one of the hardest woods. Should go through softer woods at higher feed rate.

The other question how will your edges look like when you go that fast. If you say Baltic Birch, do you mean plywood? In this case you can’t go as fast as with other types of material. Anyway, the question that Carl and Lynn already brought up, is do you want to cut so that the edges are fine, or do you want to do a chamfer step after cutting the pieces out. Also in general it is good to do a roughing pass first, which can be faster, and then make the cut slightly larger with a finer tool, which will be faster too because it removes much less material then.

Also I would not mill that deep in one pass. The formula Carl and Lynn gave you above is fine.

this video shows not the actual velocity with which it runs, just to what feed rate it is set. Therefore this test is worth nothing. Would be nice if you could see the real velocity while it runs through the wood. Without this you would need to take a video editor and mark each pass to see the seconds a pass really took. And if they simply wanted to show that the machine won’t break, I think I need no test like that, because it’s not the machine that breaks but the deflection of the axes (mainly the Z axis) and the deflection of the bit that are the problem if you don’t choose an adequate feedrate, matching the spindle power and the bit diameter. If you use a stronger spindle and a larger bit diameter, you will experience less deflection or bit breaking than with a weaker spindle and a smaller bit diameter.

If you have a really strong spindle and a large bit diameter, it’s the stepper motor speed that can be the limit. Stepper motors (both open or closed loop) loose torque very quickly at a higher speed. If you want a faster machine, and your spindle and bit diameter are already strong, you need to use servo motors which can be ten or more times faster as stepper motors.

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