I'm using as small of a dia tool as I have to basically profile out a knife blade. I'm cutting an annealed piece of W2 Steel that is .200" thick and using a 2 flute carbide finish endmill. No plunge on the tool, all cuts are full face cut though, around the contour. I'm running depth cuts and going .05" deep per cut for a total of four passes. Of course, every cut gets deeper and increases the wall impingement on the tool. I broke the first endmill in the first .05" deep cut. The second broke in the next pass at .100".

I was running 3250 RPM (highest speed on the bottom pulleys) and originally tried running F2, but that broke the first tool within 2" into the cut. I reduced F down to .5 (25%) and made it through the whole .05" pass and half way through the .100" deep pass. So time consuming and slow it is almost unbearable..

I'm thinking I may need a three flute endmill or maybe a rougher (if they even make those that small).

Whatever I do, I'd like to move a little faster on feed and have an endmill that actually lasts, because there will be a lot of the kind of cutting I described. Some will also be in Ti. Not even sure what kind of tooling to go with there.

Thanks.