I am working on a project where I am carving a relief into a sheet of plywood, they are forms for the sides of some custom concrete blocks. I am trying it with 3/4" pressure treated plywood, it's pine, (the other option is birch veneer which I think has a softer core like poplar or similar). Anyhow, I'm using a 1/2" endmill, 3/8" x&y step, and have tried with a cut pass depth of 1/8" at 20ipm, that smoked the place up. I tried a faster cut speed at like 60ipm with a cut depth of .07", that seemed to work ok while it was doing straight passes, but smoked up the place again when it started to contour into uncut wood. Am I going about this right to just find the right combination of feed & cut depth? The router is a Porter Cable & is a single speed, I think like 11,000rpm (not sure of that, but almost) here's an image of the sheet I'm trying to cut, it's 8' long & about 3' wide & will be cut out of a 4x8' sheet. You may not be able to make out the cut file image, but maybe you can get the idea.
This is something that can be done w/ the router right? I just have to find the right combo of cutting tool, feed & cut depth?
Oh yea, the end mill was a 4 flute solid carbide & I did try a 1/2" carbide straight flute too, same results w/ that. I'm pretty sure that for starters I should try a 2 or 3 flute solid carbide. . . ??
That third image is of the machine cutting a test panel out of EPS (styrofoam).
Thanks in advance for any comments or advice.
--Mike.