Hss Vs Solid Carbide End Mills, Lessons Learned, Questions.

I would bet that the reason the carbide seemed better is because you were not using the "cutting fluid".

My person thoughts on your questions above are:

1) Yes, the chips MUST eject from where you are cutting. This could be an issue of the cutting fluid not being correct - Also, try switching between conventional and climb milling (change the direction you come at the cut). On my machine I've noticed that there is too much play in the nut and if I am going one way, the cut will feel a lot better than the other.

2) Go to busy bee and buy a gallon of coolant, sounds like your cutting fluid is more of a tapping fluid which doesn't flow very well. It'll last you a long time with what you are doing.

3) I personally prefer a flood coolant. It keeps everything nice and cool, which heat is the enemy in machining (unless you are using ceramic, then it doesn't really matter). Be very careful though, with carbide you either need to have constant coolant, or none at all. Carbide is great only it can handle high temperatures and is hard, but it is brittle and if you are cutting and give it a shot of coolant you can destroy it (I haven't done this yet, but I'm not about to try either).

4) I use HSS more than I use carbide. Carbide is expensive, and on most machines not very useful since they won't have the HP and speeds that it needs to be productive. My personal opinion is to say only use HSS on your machines as it'll save you money and you shouldn't notice a difference.. the only exception to that is that is if you decide to try and machine really hard materials (stainless probably) or if you pick up pre-brazed tools like boring bars. Check out a speeds and feeds chart and compare carbide to HSS, unless you can get inside the carbide range then don't bother. One more thing to note - Carbide doesn't like interrupted cuts on the lathe. You will likely find that HSS tooling in general is a better option for you.

Having the chips come off golden isn't bad at all, it means you are right in the range that you should be but once they start to turn before they are ejected you are going to have issues with your HSS tooling breaking down and chipping. On a good note though, I did just buy an endmill sharpener so once I get it working well and all figured out you can come re-sharpen all the damaged "learning" tooling and try again.

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