I spent most of Thursday and Friday setting up roller tables so I could
run the large pieces of bar stock into my bandsaw, and roughing out
blanks. I liked the way it saw cut.

Today I am truing up blanks on the Hurco mill for further machining.
Cut starts sound a little hard on my face mill, but the surface finish
on the final pass is really nice.

Higher RPM with the same feed reduced the pounding, and of course
improved the finish even on the roughing passes. Flood coolant seems to
work about the same as cutting oil, so I went with flood coolant since I
don't have to stand there with a brush. The face mill does not have
only has TiN coated inserts. They definitely did not work well dry. It
cut, but the sound made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

I am not looking forward to the sound of the detailed machining of the
embossing portions on the smaller mills at "high" speed, but the stuff
machines really nicely at lower RPMs on the big mill. My finish pass
isn't mirror smooth, but its close enough I know I could make it that
way if I needed to.