Using surfacing bit to clear large area

I used the search but couldn’t not find anything quite related.

Mdf door panel, using my 1/8” upcut bit will take almost 3 hours at 12mm/s to clear the center area for a framed shaker style door. Could I use a surfacing bit for most of it and the 1/8” for a cleanup pass??

With a surfacing bit, you will have to make very shallow cuts, pretty much eliminating any gains you are going to get from it being a bigger bit. You might step up to a 1/4" bit though for your rough passes.

I do have a 1/4” Whiteside bit on the way but it will be a couple of weeks still. I’m only going down 3mm so not a big depth. Is 0.75mm passes small enough?

I surfaced my MDF table 2mm deep it did not like the first cut if you did the first slot cut shallower probably
better but I was cutting at 800 mm min up to 1200 at 40% step over with1 inch bit try a scrap and adjust.

Now that was with the premo the burley 1mm deed and 800 mm min if I remember correctly

I’ve used a 1" surfacing bit with good results several times in raw wood slabs (cut from a log so knots and all). I can’t recall the speeds but can look them up for you.

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I ended up trying my 1.5” surfacing bit for the first time. I did 0.75mm heights at 8mm/s and it worked great. I then used my cheap 1/8” upcut bit to clean it up and cut it out. What didn’t work great was that it left lines but I already knew that was because parts of my gantry were cracked from newbie mistakes (When I was trying to change the speed to 30 inches/min I accidentally set it to 300 inches /min ). I have the new parts printed I just have to cut some cables and put connectors on them.

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Those lines tend to happen if your router isn’t perfectly perpendicular.

You might try DW 660 Perpendicularity Tester by Allted - Thingiverse to see how far out you are.