Thumb Calibration

I am trying to get an idea of rules of thumb for speed and feeds
that work.

This weekend I was milling my first few parts with EMC and I noticed
that the cutters dont fare quite as well as they did when I was
doing it by hand.

I made a .1" deep cut in hot rolled mild steel at .9 ipm for about
30 inches. The HSS tool died quite suddenly from overheating, with
no gradual degradation. It was working fine with little smoke from
the cutting oil then- poof, blue chips burned cutter... The machine
has a 2 HP motor and was running about 400 rpm.

Should I switch to carbide ? I never liked them because I chip them
easily, but the EMC is much more patient than me so maybe this wont
be a problem. How much improvement will I get from carbide ? Will
the flood coolant system make a big difference ?

What are other users experiences with speed/feeds in various
materials ?