Hi,
a couple of other ideas to think about.
You may have seen a lot of carbide tools with coatings like Titanium Nitride, Titanium Carbo Nitride and so on.
They are very good when cutting steels but not with aluminium.
The coatings are very hard and aid lubricity so chips slide off and over the surface. Most of the coatings are variations of nitirides
which are trivalent. Aluminium is trivalent and the lubricity a coating might add for steel is actually 'sticky' for aluminium.
Consequently carbide tools sold for aluminium are often not coated at all. There are coatings that do work and work well including
C(hemical) V(apour)D(eposit) diamond (being essentially quad-valent) but are expensive and rare. Don't go there until you are 100% experienced and can get days
or even weeks without breaking a tool before you consider these exotics. There is one coating that is not common but not that expensive,
Titanium Diboride, and its just the bees knees for aluminium.
I use small, I mean very small endmills for making circuit boards, 0.4mm and 0.5mm (16-20 thou) and you only have to look cross-eyed at
them and they break. You are likely to have quite a few accidents before you get good at it. Cheap tools are OK when starting out but once you get
good enough to not break too many you should be using branded tools, they are more expensive, lots more expensive in cases but often are that much superior.
Harvey Tools have a vast range and all good. I tried some Raptor endmills from Destiny Tools and while expensive, in stainless and tough steels like 4340, just the best
I've ever used. I haven't tried their Viper DVH tools but are meant to be good for aluminium, 45 degree variable helix, with and without coatings.
I know a lot of sources say don't bother with coolant with carbide tools, I find though I get a huge performance lift when using flood coolant, I suspect more because
of flushing the chips out of the cut zone. When flood cooling works it will improve tool life by a factor of ten or better!
Craig