TCT Router cutters in a mill running at 4000 RPM

**suesi34e** · 23-02-2014

Dear All,

I have TCT cutters designed for my router most run at between 8000 RPM to 24000RPM in a hand held or fixed router. What I would really like to know is ifanyone has successfully used such cutters in a mill to cut wood, my mill runsat 4000 RPM max. Any advice on this area would be very interesting to me.

If I try the cutters and have any luck I will try and post something about it.

Many thanks for any help

All the best

Suesi

**EddyCurrent** · 23-02-2014

I get very poor results at those low speeds unless of course they are very large diameter cutters and hence have a high peripheral speed.
At those speeds they also tend to grab the wood and send it flying if you're not careful.

**suesi34e** · 23-02-2014

Hi Eddy,

Thank you for the reply and info. I was pleased I had areply on this but it does not sound like a promising prospect using routercutters at a low speed. That is a shame!

All the best

Suesi

**m_c** · 24-02-2014

One thing worth mentioning is you really shouldn't machine wood on metalworking machines, especially ones that aren't well sealed.
They really aren't designed to handle the inevitable sawdust which will work it's way in to places it shouldn't, and clog things up.

**suesi34e** · 24-02-2014

Hi m_c

Tar very much for letting me know you shouldn't machine wood on a mill. Themanual says that you can machine wood on it but with what you have said I willnot do that the last thing I want is to damage my machine. I will go by whatyou say having read many of your posts. Thanks again you could have saved me alot of trouble.

All the best

Suesi

**Jonathan** · 24-02-2014

I once cut plywood a wind turbine blade on my milling machine with a TCT router bit, long before I'd made the CNC router. Due to the potential problems from the dust I taped paper to the machine to stop the dust getting on the slides too much, then cleaned and oiled everything thoroughly afterwards. The chipload can be kept quite high - I used something like 0.2-0.3mm chipload at 2150rpm. I think it was a 1/2" cutter. The milling machine is obviously very strong compared to a router, so you can push it quite fast. Not something I would do remotely regularly though...

**EddyCurrent** · 24-02-2014

You could always rig up a dust extractor which is mostly essential for wood, also a bigger cutter will help.

**suesi34e** · 25-02-2014

Hi EddyCurrent,

Thank you for your help I thought about the extraction side of things but whatI am hearing is the cutters will not work all that well at slow speed anyway.It is a shame as I would like to have made a few little bits out of wood!

Many thanks

Suesi

**EddyCurrent** · 25-02-2014

Originally Posted by suesi34e

Hi EddyCurrent,

Thank you for your help I thought about the extraction side of things but whatI am hearing is the cutters will not work all that well at slow speed anyway.It is a shame as I would like to have made a few little bits out of wood!

Many thanks

Suesi

It might be that if you used a hard wood, hard as in 'aluminium like', you may have more success, but even so I'm cutting aluminium on my pin router that's designed for wood but I find it likes a speed of about 8000 to 10000 rpm with a 6mm spiral cutter designed for aluminium.

Janka hardness test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://workshoppages.com/WS/Misc/Woo...ness-Chart.pdf

**GEOFFREY** · 25-02-2014

Unless you use a very large diameter cutter you will only "chew" most timber at 4000 rpm.This is where the horses for courses bit comes in. Milling machines are generally very rigid and are designed to cut metals and harder materials, but do not usually have high speed spindles. Routers on the other hand do usually have high speed spindles and are used predominately for softer materials. If you really want to cut timber (I seem to think that your first post referred mainly to cutting metal) I think you will need to become a "dab hand" at using abrasive paper!! Good luck. G.