Recently I wrote about the steps I took to reduce the cutting time of a particular part from 67 minutes down to 20 minutes. I have now purchased a couple of 1/8″ four flute endmills from Enco.

I can now cut the 1/8″ wide groove in the design, plus the outer profile with holding tabs much more quickly. In addition I can use the 1/8″ bit to perform a quick roughing pass on the pocket operation. Once complete I switch to the 0.0571″ endmill and make a finishing pass around the edges of the pocket, increasing the detail.

The new time, including the manual tool change, is about 10 minutes. Not bad. At the end of the cutting process the motors, stepper driver chips, transformer and dremel are all a lot cooler.

One small downside is that the 1/8″ bit make a lot of noise.