[kreativjustin]

So, I work in a small tool room. I have a Fadal Mill with 10k spindle. I have really good coolant, always keeps my tools and parts cool.

I have to do a bunch of profiling and pocketing into 4140 pre-hard. I've never dealt with it before, so this is going to be my first swing at it.

So I have .5" 4 flute uncoated carbide endmills and a couple of .5 4fl ALTiCrN coated endmills to work with. Nothing much bigger, besides maybe a 5/8, which is uncoated aswell.

I use Cam software that doesn't input feeds and speeds for me unless I manually set them & save them. I've got some engineers saying small (.010") passes with fast feeds, and another guy saying .05 passes with slow feeds. So I'm pretty lost right now, and can't afford to destroy my tooling. I do understand that I may get 5 different answers here, but I have to do my best to find the happy median.

Any help is appreciated.

[rcs60]

uncoated carbide end mills should be run slower (200-300 sfm) i would start at 1500 rpm and 20 ipm at the .05 radial depth of cut
the alticrn wants the be run faster so that it activates the al in the coating to become aluminum oxide (700-900 sfm) 5000 rpm at 150 ipm at .01 radial depth of cut/ 5000 rpm at 70ipm at .05 depth of cut
run the alticrn dry no coolant you will probably have to hook up an airline to remove the chips from the pockets
most of this depends on the rigidity of part,machine,and tool/spindle, length of cut
can your fadal handle the look a head for high speed machining (cam software program) ?

[kreativjustin]

As we are a tool room, and I can let the machine run while I do other things, I don't usually do high speed machining. I'm not sure if the software handles it either. I may hit 100IPM max the machine with plastics, 60 on aluminum. We don't have the coolant pump hooked up for the spindle chiller, so I tend to not go over 4k RPMs for more than a half hour at a time. Right now we just direct air cool the spindle I believe (I could be wrong).

I use SmartCAM for the cam software.