One knob — cutting speed — three things that fight each other. Speed up and you make more parts an hour, but the tool wears out faster and each part costs more; slow down and the machine time eats you alive. There is no setting that wins on everything. Scrub the speed and watch the curves cross — then find the cheapest place to run.
A simplified machining-economics model with Taylor tool life (T ∝ V⁻³): throughput ∝ V, cost/part = machine-time + tool-wear. Node-verified U-shaped cost with an interior economic speed; maxing throughput collapses tool life. Curves are normalized to share one axis; the read-outs are the real numbers. Built on the reusable probe.js primitive. · Institute for Physical AI @ BMI