Just wanted to follow up with this; I’ve used the chart on my last few jobs (slotting out parts in plywood) and the calcs have held up very well! Meaning that when deciding on your feeds, speeds, and DOC, take a second to do the math, and your chance of successful cut goes up 10 fold compared to vibes alone.
Examples using the v1 1/8" single upcut bit, slotting thru plywood
- 3 mm DOC, 20 mm/s, 10k rpm = 0.12 mm chip thickness, right in the middle range of the table… result: successful cuts, chips not dust
- 6 mm DOC, 20 mm/s, 12k rpm = 0.1 mm chip thickness, again right in the middle range, and again successful cuts, making chips not dust. Keeping in mind that 2x diameter DOC requires chip thickness * 0.75. So I took my 0.12 mm chip thickness * 0.75 = 0.09, then I just bumped up RPM until chip thickness hit 0.1 mm (close enough to 0.09 mm for me lol). It would be dope if EstlCAM took DOC as a function of tool diameter into the chip thickness calc automatically, but no big deal
I’ve been aiming for the middle range of chip thickness so I know I’m not pushing the envelope, but also not leaving all the performance on the table. I much prefer calculating the RPMs rather than go by the folks saying to “adjust it till it sounds good” lol. I totally get what folks mean by that, but I don’t know what sounds good and what doesn’t! I’m new, I’m wearing hearing protection, and running dust extraction, so it all sounds like glorious controlled chaos to me lol. Instead I’m like “well the numbers match up, and those are definitely little wood chips, so it can’t be too out of spec”, which puts my mind at ease and makes it all that much more fun!