Best strategy for sheet aluminium holes and cutouts

[magicniner]

Try the single flute carbide bits, they work brilliantly on aluminium with air for cooling and chip removal, I've had no issues with plain carbide.
I use 2D contour profiling for a lot of parts, holes too unless it would involve many passes to achieve the hole diameter with the loaded tool.

- Nick

[d4cnc]

Thanks for the advice.. I was looking for some single cutters too but couldn't find any TiAlN coated ones.. perhaps it doesn't matter so much for single flutes?

I'll pick up some 2mm single flutes then...
Perhaps these:
http://www.cutwel.co.uk/milling/mill...l-e5e47-series

Or Europa Tools http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item...834460&alt=web