I just thought that I would pass along some info on some tooling that is working well with my 1100 and 770's for cutting tough gummy materials. I had previously used Accupro and Kennametal carbide end mills for my work and have had great results. I bought a few of these Destiny Tool Raptor DVH series end mills to try out a couple months ago and I am pretty impressed with their performance. Anyway, I had to cut some 1/8" titanium sheet/plate for a project yesterday and the motor on my import band saw finally went up in smoke. NBD- it has paid for itself over the years at least 10 fold so I am just going to celebrate its life and retrofit a donor.
Well I had to get this material cut and I hate using a cut-off wheel on Titanium. I also didn't want to use the plasma due to warpage issues and HAZ possibly inducing later structural problems. This basically left me with the option of running 1 foot long slots to get my 2.25" x 12" stock profile. Wanting to balance efficiency with kerf loss (Certified Ti is stupid costly) I just grabbed the 1/4" EM that I had used for profiling my last stainless job. I calculated the feeds using the OEM's data and opted for a slightly below mid-range SFM. The results made me quite happy! This little end mill slotted 15 feet of 0.125" Ti and is still in great shape. My 770 had no resonance to speak of.
If anyone cares to see the cutter in action I have some rather marginal quality camera and lighting work that shows footage of the 13th and 14th slots. The initial cost of these end mills is a little up there, but I'm not going to complain if I can keep getting performance that is pretty rock solid in challenging materials. For those of you that choose to watch I hope that you don't mind my tired ramblings and occasional shakes. I have 2 other cameras that I am moving into the work area so I can document my projects better. This camera is shot and the focus adjustment has a mind of its own.
https://youtu.be/t2d02DZfRBI:cheers: