[manyhats2007]

Does anyone use half inch endmills on their hobby level machines? I finally have my machine smoothed out and dialed in. I have projects that will take me roughly 8-12 hours with a .25" endmill. I would love to speed up the roughing process with a larger endmill, but haven't heard of anyone using them.
Any thoughts?

[BuckNaked31]

Absolutely. I use 1/2" 2" cut length straight and spirals. I cut guitars out of some pretty hard woods. I cut at 120ipm on an older acme driven CNCRouterparts type machine.

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[manyhats2007]

Thanks for the response. What depth of cut do you use with that bit? I was thinking .25" or so.

[BuckNaked31]

.25, but if I'm cutting cheap plywood, I'll set my max pass depth to .375. This cuts the imported stuff in 2 passes... it's actually only .72 inches thick anyway. I would normally use a 1/4" cutter, but if it has a lot of pockets or dadoes I'll blast away with a 1/2".

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[manyhats2007]

I don't think my machine is quite as rigid as yours, but I'm going to give it a shot. I probably won't be as aggressive with it, because I need to use an extra long end mill. Thanks for the help.