Milling Feed Rate & Travel Time Calculator

How the milling feed rate & travel time calculator works

Table feed in mm/min is rpm times effective teeth times chip load in mm/tooth. Travel distance is cut length plus total extra travel per pass, multiplied by passes. Extra travel is not automatically doubled for two ends.

Ideal travel minutes are total distance divided by feed. Add fixed non-cut minutes once for elapsed job time. Positive distance at zero feed has unavailable travel time; zero distance has zero travel time and still retains the explicitly entered non-cut allowance.

This arithmetic does not choose feeds or chip loads and does not model acceleration, toolpath curvature, engagement corrections, rapid moves or process safety. Use consistent effective tooth definitions and verify tool, workpiece and machine settings independently.

Worked example

2,000 rpm × four effective teeth × 0.05 mm/tooth gives 400 mm/min. Three passes of 500 mm plus 20 mm extra travel total 1,560 mm, taking 3.9 ideal minutes. Adding two non-cut minutes gives 5.9 minutes. At 0.10 mm/tooth, calculated feed is 800 mm/min.

Sources and assumptions

The source material explains the underlying calculation or pricing structure. Entered prices, costs, schedules and scenario choices are your assumptions; this tool does not obtain supplier quotes or predict actual results.

• Sandvik Coromant: metric milling formulas and effective cutting diameter