Talk:Endmill

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[edit] Cutter material and sharpness when cutting aluminium

Under "Applications" using pre-dulled endmills when cutting aluminium is mentioned. From my experience aluminium and other soft materials benefit from very sharp cutter, often favoring HSS over solid carbide. Any thoughts?

[edit] Didn't the name "endmill" originally (19th-c.) differentiate endmills from through-arbor milling cutters?

To anyone knowledgeable about the history of machine tools: Isn't it true that the name "endmill" originally differentiated endmills from the general superset of through-arbor milling cutters (which the arbor passes through)? I'm talking about back in the 19th century when most and possibly all milling machines were horizontal milling machines with the arbor supported by bearings on both ends. In an environment where that configuration was the norm, cutting with the end of the milling cutter would be a novel notion worthy of a different name. I am not going to enter this into the article at the moment because I'm not knowledgeable enough about machine tool history to be sure. Alas, I wonder if this is something that falls into the epistemological category of "The only people who knew the whole story on that are dead now and didn't write any books about it before dying". Lumbercutter 19:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)