Increasing of cutting speed and thus increasing labour productivity is observed as a current trend in engineering production. This effort results to development of new cutting materials which are more capable to resist increased requirements on machined surface as well as operating life of the instrument. Nowadays, the most widely used materials used for cutting instruments are sintered carbides which are alloyed by other metals. The goal of this paper is to analyse change in quality of machined surface depending on the change of cutting conditions. For cutting operation, there were used a milling cutter high-speed steel 90 (HSS) and removable sintered-carbide tips with different radius. Steel 12 050 hardened for 17 HRC was used as a machined material. Firstly, hardness of machined as well as machining materials was analysed. Further, metallographic analysis and measurement of microhardness of the individual structure phases was processed. Cutting conditions of both instruments were selected depending on the machined material. Surface roughness indicates the quality of machined surface.