[Cory]

I will try to post more later, but I'm in the middle of a ton of projects/work right now.

My best recommendation is don't splurge. Buy the things you know you will use all the time and add the rest later (unless you have the money now and have to spend it all right now).

We purchased a ton of tooling when we got our machine in 07 and to this day about 40-50% of that initial purchase has gone untouched because we didn't know exactly what we'd be doing and what we should buy.

We got a bunch of ball end mills and roughing end mills in regular and extended lengths as well as 2 and 4 flute end mills in regular/extended. We have pretty much any size you'd need and any type, but they aren't good for what we do every day. We've pretty much turned over all our tooling so that nothing we use on a regular basis is comparable to any of the tooling we initially purchased.

I like Lakeshore for end mills. Never really have purchased from Maritool, since their end mills have been more geared towards ferrous machining until recently. Don't bother with the roughing/finishing combo. Your machine doesn't have enough power to take full advantage of either. We have 2 flute and 3 flute in 1/8" increments from 1/4" to 3/4", with the vast majority being 1/4" and 1/2". 2 flute for anything under 1/4". If you treat them nicely they will last forever-I've been using one 3 flute 3/4" end mill for 3 years and a 3 flute extended length 1/2" end mill for almost as long. Pretty much the only reason you'll ever need to replace an aluminum specific EM is because you either did something stupid and broke it, or you couldn't evacuate chips fast enough to keep it from loading up and snapping. They really don't wear out.

The only coatings worth looking at are Zirconium Nitride, Molybdenum Disulfide (Destiny Tools' "Stealth" coating. Really awesome for aluminum), Titanium Diboride, and Titanium Carbonitride (ok, but not great). Avoid Titanium Nitride, Titanium Aluminum Nitride, or Aluminum Titanium Nitride like the plague for non-ferrous applications. These will cause aluminum to gall on the tool.

If you are just learning I would probably recommend against purchasing the aluminum specific tools up front. It's hard to justify spending 50 bucks on a 1/2" endmill that you are guaranteed to break in short order when you could spend half as much for a tool that will get the job done a bit slower. Once you have some experience operating the machine and aren't making as many mistakes they're a worthy investment.

I also like latheinserts.com. We bought a lot of aluminum specific inserted tooling (and some Destiny end mills) for our lathe and CNC mill from them. The owner is very friendly and helpful with recommending tooling for a given application. His prices are also extremely good and he will never try to sell you something you don't need.