Proper bit, speed an IPM for fir,pine and western red cedar

[Art]

I haven't been succesful in getting clean cuts in fir, pine and wester red cedar. Anyone been have any sucess with these woods?

[Greg J]

Art,

Check out this page of Onsrud's site.

https://www.onsrud.com/xdoc/FeedSpeeds

[Alan_c]

You can also try climb cutting (if not doing so already). Conventional cutting tends to tear out the grain, especially on the end grain, climb cutting reduces this, worked very well on the pine toilet seats I used to cut, that and of course very sharp cutters, those woods are not very forgiving of slightly blunt cutters. I used to cut at 18000 rpm and 8m/min (20 - 40mm od cutter)

[Richards]

Have you tried steel cutters instead of carbide? Although steel gets dull in a hurry, it is usually sharper to start with. I used steel when pocketing some cedar with excellent results.

[Doug_Ford]

Good point Mike. My machine shop instructor told us that carbide cutters aren't usually as sharp as High Speed Steel cutters.

[smreish]

How true.
I always have a handful of plain ole HSS 1/4" and 3/8" bits in the box for such emergencies.
As a matter of fact, I used the 1/8" variety earlier in the week to cut out a lot of aluminum plate parts. Worked just fine.

[Art]

I am runnig a indexer and a maor use is to roung 4 and 8 side stock to roud. I set he ctter ablot 1" off top dead center running 150 RPM and 10 to 50 IP.