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Following are some guidelines to help you decide what balance is right for you.
Guidelines for End mill selection
Tool diameter
A good range of diameters is important in order to handle a range of parts.
It’s recommended you avoid the situation where the next largest tool in your toolset tool library is more than 50% larger than the previous.
For example, if you have a 6 mm tool, 50% larger is 9 mm. However, that’s an uncommon size so you should have an 8 mm tool.
Suggested set of diameters
Imperial - 1/16 in (0.0625), 3/32 in (0.09375), 1/8 in (0.125), 3/16 in (0.1875), 1/4 in (0.25), 5/16 in (0.3125), 3/8 in (0.375 in), 5/8 in (0.625), 3/4 in (0.75)
Metric: 2 mm. 3 mm, 4 mm, 6 mm, 8 mm, 10 mm, 12 mm, 16 mm, 20 mm.
Tool Usable Length
Unless you already have a well organized set of long tools defined in Fusion 360, you may wish to skip this step for now, or copy the long tools from the sample toolsettools.
It is a good idea to make sure that, at each diameter, you have a tool capable of machining more than 5 times the tool diameter (for example, a ‘Shoulder length’ of at least 5xD).
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Adding longer tools is all the more important if your short tools do not cover every diameter, as described above.
Operations
The above applies to all Fusion 360 operations. CAM Assist works best if you have a range of Roughing, Wall finishing, Flat finishing, and Helical boring tools. These can be the same tools as each other, or a different set of tools for each operation.
Corner Radii
Often, it is difficult to access 3D features with a ball nose tool. If you add Bull nose endmills with corner radii, CAM Assist will also use these tools for 3D toolpaths, for example to create fillets.
In fact, it’s recommended that most of your tools have a small corner radius, 0.2 mm or 0.005 in (5 thou). Any larger than this and the tool will not be used for machining square pockets, which reduces the versatility of the tool.
Quantity of End mills
You can add as many end mills as you like to your toolsettool library. However, a minimum of 10 is essential for good results on a range of simple parts; diminishing returns occur after about 30 tools.
If you follow the guidance above, you should find that you are able to machine most common geometries with less than 30 End mills.
Next step
This section of the Tooling Guide has concentrated on End mills. For details of what else to include, see Which Other Tools Should be in the ToolsetTool Library?