Tool Life Expectations?

[JAZZCNC]

BTW - is that tool life using "normal" toolpaths or iMachining/HSM? There are some stunning youtube vids of the latter in steels albeit on what must be very rigid moving bed mills rather than the gantry type and they are claim 70%+ better tool life - shame the continental company that makes the software is not more Google/Trimble rather than Autodesk in terms of price point ;)

No that's conventional cutting and yes the I-machining does indeed improve tool life massively but like you say it's resoanably hard on the machine if run at the higher settings but it can still be fine on even larger gantry machine like mine.
Here's a rough shaky video of my machine doing a little, these are just roughing passes, was finished with 4mm and conventional wall & floor paths. This was level 2 and theres 8 levels plus turbo mode.!! The DOC is 7.5mm but only because flute length was only 10mm other wise it would have done it full depth 15mm just has easy and at same feed etc. CNC Stepper spacers using i-machinine toolpaths - YouTube

This is the finished part just off the machine.