A Guideline Feed and Speed Calculator for Milling
Here you will find a handy calculator for determining the appropriate RPM and feed rate for many milling applications. Many CAM programs do this for you, but we find it handy to have on hand in case we are doing manual cuts, or simply want to adjust our feed rates at the machine. Another thing that is handy about this calculator is that it gives you the correct adjusted feed rate for milling an inside or outside radius (in order to maintain chip load) this feature is also handy for figuring out the correct feed rate for thread milling applications, since the diameter of the tool and diameter of the part being threaded are important factors when selecting feed rate.
Lastly, we've included horsepower calculator that determines the horsepower required to perform a given cut. This is useful for feed optimization because as tool loads change due to the amount of material engaged with the cutter at any given time, feeds can either be sped up or slowed down (within your own limits) in order to maintain a uniform load on the cutter.
Fields in teal are dropdown menus to provide some guidance and fields in yellow are to be filled in by the user with numerical values
