Having experimented on some pine I am now using some hardwood - not sure what sort - as used in hardwood window frames I believe.
I have a 3040 with a 6mm down cutting 2 fluted spiral cutter.
My question is around feed rates and depth of cut etc.
I understand that for a down cutter I should limit the depth of cut to something less than the diameter of the cutter - that's all fine but I find that if I try to cut 4mm it seems to struggle a little and the spindle appears to 'snatch' from time to time.

I am currently limiting the depth of cut to 1mm and I am using a feed rate of 75 in order to give the least stress to the tool etc.

However, this means that to cut a 55mm square pocket 33mm deep it is going to take over 5hrs to complete.

Is this normal and to be expected or am I out by an order of magnitude?

What sort of feed rates / depths should I hope to be achieving when cutting hard wood on a machine like this with the bit that I have?

If this is the way that it is with this kind of machine then I can live with that - I just don't want to take 3 days to cut something that I really should be turning out in 30 minutes!

Thank you in anticipation!
Richard