Now, Industry Tested CNC Router Bits at Affordable Prices.

Guaranteed Performance

Selecting from our range of Router Bits will give you the satisfaction of knowing you are giving yourself the best chance of producing a quality finish time after time. Not only that, with very reasonable prices and long life you won’t blow the budget.

CHOOSING A ROUTER CUTTER

ENDMILL SPIRAL ROUTER CUTTERS

This family of cutters come in a variety of wing configurations. Usually  from one to four wings. Invariably they are end milling which means the cut on the end is across the whole diameter of the cutter. This means you can plunge your cutter directly into the workpiece and it will leave a clean hole with no burning in the centre. It is always recommended however to ramp into the workpiece. We usually go for three times the diameter of the cutter. This causes far less stress on the router.

UPCUT and DOWNCUT SPIRAL BIT

This is determined by the direction of the spiral. The image to the left is actually a down cut.
With an upcut the flutes act like a screw shearing the material off and moving it in an upward direction to eject it from the top of the hole or trench. Upcut spirals are probably the most commonly used for that reason. However because the action is in an upward direction they can leave a rough edge on the top of the cut.
Downcuts work in the opposite direct and leave a very good finish on the top of the cut but can chip out on the bottom. This is somewhat negated by the spoil board on the bottom side acting as a chip breaker.
The disadvantage of theses cutters especially on deep cuts is the action of the screw like spiral as it forces the timber down thereby increasing the likelihood of the material being caught in the trench and not clearing properly.

This action can create heat build-up which will dull cutters.

COMPRESSION CUTTERS

Compression cutters offer the best of both worlds. The top section of the cutter is a down spiral which gives a clean finish on the top of the work piece while the bottom is an upcut configuration giving a great clean finish on the bottom of the job.
This is particularly important for laminated boards such as white HMR board and the more expensive coloured boards used for doors, drawers Etc.

They do require specialised manufacturing techniques and therefore are more expensive to purchase. However in my opinion they are well worth the additional cost.

SPIRAL ROUGHING CUTTER

Roughing Cutters are very useful for  removing material faster than a conventional spiral cutter and are particularly suited to solid timber work. They stay sharper longer that a normal cutter and can be fed faster depending on your CNC’s capability. Like the finishing spiral cutters, they also come in a variety of wing configurations. Two and three wings.

While they remove material quickly the downside is they leave a very coarse finish. To overcome this you would run the tool path at about 1mm oversize and then finish the job with one full depth pass with either an  up or down spiral. Because most of the waste material has been removed by the upcut action of the roughing spiral, it is a good idea to use the down spiral to give a good finish on the top edge.

TAPERED AND STRAIGHT BALLNOSE

Ideal cutter for 3D carving in programs similar to Vetric. They are used for a very fine finish on the final fine pass. The smaller the step over (the distance the cutter moves across with every pass) the finer the finish. The tapered configuration gives the cutter greater rigidity. All our tapered ballnose cutters come with the TiSiN coating for longer life. This gives a Hardness Value (HV) of 3800 and a maximum working temperature of 1100°C.