I'm new to working in the manufacturing world, and some things at my place of work do not seem to be agreeing. I have a design engineer who blames the operators for bits constantly being broken. As I have worked on our routers when I was first hired I do not agree. I feel like we are running something incorrectly.

We are machining UHMW, HDPE plastics from 1/4" - 1 1/2" thicknesses. The thinner stuff cuts no problem but the 1" and 1 1/2" keeps snapping bits in half. At first, I thought they were buying cheap bits, but we source from multiple in the area. One place they bought them out.

They run the routers the same regardless same feed rate and 18k rpm for 1/4" as they do for the big stuff. Some stuff I am seeing online says slow feed rate increase rpm others say the opposite. The cut quality is fine right now, I figure I can fix issues that arise later. I just need to stop snapping six $80+ bits in two days.