Zone: Machining Centers & Milling Machines

How to Improve Machining Center Accuracy

Accuracy is not just inherent to the machine—it also depends on how the machine is used. Try these techniques to let a new or existing CNC machining center achieve its potential precision.

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Video: Getting Started With Minimum Quantity Lubrication

Minimum quantity lubrication does not require a special machine tool or special tooling. This video makes the case for MQL and describes how to apply it effectively.

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When Spindle Speed Is a Constraint
3/11/2010 Modern Machine Shop: Though it won’t replace high speed machining, Boeing sees “low speed machining” as a viable supplement to higher-rpm machines. Using new tools and techniques, a shop’s lower-rpm machining centers can realize much more of their potential productivity in milling aluminum aircraft parts.
Video: High Speed Milling—900 ipm
2/18/2010 Modern Machine Shop: Demonstation illustrates the kind of metal removal rate that is possible in aluminum at dynamically stable speeds.
Dial Down or Dial Up?
2/12/2010 Modern Machine Shop: Vibration analysis may be the machining center’s missing piece. If you haven’t performed this analysis on your high speed machine, you probably don’t know what the machine can do.
The Promise of "High Cube" Machining
2/12/2010 Modern Machine Shop: Tool paths and a new tool design provide an alternative to high speed machining for achieving high metal removal rates in hard metals on lighter-duty machines.
Video: Milling Inconel 718 Efficiently Without a Heavy Machine
2/12/2010 Modern Machine Shop: This video of machining Inconel at a fast metal removal rate shows the effect of constant-engagement-angle milling.

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Overview Of:
Machining Centers & Milling Machines

The term “machining center” describes almost any CNC milling and drilling machine that includes an automatic toolchanger and a table that clamps the workpiece in place. On a machining center (as contrasted with a turning machine), the tool rotates, but the work does not. The most basic variety of this type of machine is also the most basic CNC machine tool—a vertical machining center. While vertical machining centers can be high-end machines because of their precision and/or their size, a small and simple vertical machining center is a relatively low-cost CNC machine tool that often represents a new machine shop’s first machine tool purchase. The orientation of the spindle is the most fundamental defining characteristic of a machining center. Vertical machining centers and horizontal machining centers have (obviously) vertically and horizontally oriented spindles. Vertical machines generally favor precision while horizontal machines generally favor production—but these generalizations are loose, and plenty of machines break out of them. Other choices in machining center orientation include the universal machining center, which can change between vertical and horizontal spindle arrangement. More common than this is the five-axis machining center, which adds rotary motion to the machine’s linear motion. The machine pivots the tool and/or the part not only to mill and drill at various angles, but also to mill swept surfaces. Machining centers linked by an automated pallet system can form an automated machining cell. Such a cell can machine a queue of different parts without operator attention by shuttling the parts in and out of the various machines as appropriate. Related machines in this category include the boring mill, which generally describes a large machine for heavy and/or precise milling and hole making. Another related machine is the manual milling machine. Such a machine may have some basic programmability, but it generally lacks an automatic toolchanger, meaning the tool change is a manual step.