Plywood cutting tips please

1

Today was the first day that I have ever cut plywood; before I’d always used MDF.

I’m using an M4 with a spindle that can go up to 10000 rpms (same as @dlang has). On my first test cut at full speed the plywood burned a bit.
I reduced the speed but it’s hard to judge just how fast it’s going. I ran some cuts but the result wasn’t good. I’m thinking that i have to increase the spindle speed but somehow find the point where it doesn’t burn.

I noticed that the sledge jittered about a bit and wasn’t smooth during cuts.
The plywood is 10mm thick and I was doing 2mm deep each pass.

Any tips?

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if you are burning bits, you are probably producing sawdust, not chips.

slow the rpm or increase the feed speed.

David Lang

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From my experience, MDF dulls a bit fast. It isn’t that noticable when cutting MDF, but definitely is when you use the same bit on Ply.

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