The machining tool selector

The machining tool selector answers the question a tooling customer actually asks. Not what does this cost, but what should I use to machine this, and what do I run it at. You describe the part, the material, the machine and the cut; it returns the tool specification and the cutting data together, then ranks what you hold against it.

What it asks for

• The part: a block, a plate, a bar, a tube or a casting, and how big it is.
• The material, as one of sixteen the published cutting data covers, with its condition where that changes the answer.
• The machine, then what it is doing to the part: nine milling operations, seven turning operations and seven ways of making a hole.
• The cut itself, which is only ever the figures that operation genuinely needs.
• The surface finish, for a finishing pass, and the machine's own speed and power, which are checked rather than assumed.

What it returns

• The tool: diameter, flutes, coating, corner and reach for a solid tool, or the ISO 1832 designation, nose radius, grade class, chipbreaker and holder entering angle for an indexable one.
• The cutting data: cutting speed, spindle speed, feed, table feed, depth and width of cut, removal rate, power at the cut and torque.
• The setup: climb or conventional, how to enter, the coolant, the pecking, how many passes it takes and how the work is held.
• The warnings the cut earns, from a spindle that cannot pull it to a coating the publisher excludes for that material.

How it reads a published table

A published cutting speed belongs to a published engagement. The catalogue rows carry their own depth and width of cut, and the feed printed on a row already carries the chip thinning for that row's radial engagement. So when your cut is at a different engagement, the selector takes the feed back to the chip thickness the row was built on and forward again to yours, rather than quoting it across unchanged. That correction is the difference between a number that is right and a number that looks right.

Where it abstains

The catalogues publish no solid carbide slotting row for hardened steel, no high speed steel row for aluminium, titanium or the nickel alloys, and no coated carbide turning row for aluminium. In each case the selector says so and quotes no speed, rather than reading a neighbouring row across. It states no tool life in minutes either, because no reachable source publishes the reference life that would anchor one: it reports what a change of speed costs in life instead, which the published Taylor exponent does support.

Where two publishers disagree, both are carried and the selector names which it used. The depth of cut against the nose radius is the clearest case: one maker puts the depth below the radius for a finishing pass and another puts it above the radius for general turning, and the two bands do not overlap at any radius.

What it matches

One answer can be a solid end mill, a drill, a reamer, an indexable insert or the holder that insert goes in, and those live under three different catalogue schemas. The selector reads all three, classifies each row by what it actually is and scores it against its own kind: a turning insert is not a poor answer to a slot, it is not an answer to a slot. Holders are shown after the inserts, because a holder that takes the right shape always scores well and is the accessory rather than the answer.

Sources

Compiled on 21 September 2026 from published manufacturer technical data and standards: solid carbide and high speed steel milling tables indexed by ISO group, operation and cutter diameter; indexable turning speed, feed and depth tables split by cutting area; carbide drilling speeds and the published feed column table; reaming allowances and speeds; the ISO 513 application groups; the ISO 1832 insert designation; published coating temperatures and their publishers' own workpiece lists; and the standard milling, turning and drilling formulas. Every result line names its own table in a why popover.