It’s without a doubt that the most adaptable machine instrument is the vertical mill milling machine. A mill can be used to flatten, bore, drill, chamfer, profile amongst other things. There are mini mills, mill drills, side mills and vertical mills. Milling machine is made up of a vertically mounted motor and a spindle, a table that can be moved around with good precision and a mount or body keeping everything together. Milling machines employ small cutters such as ball end mills, four flute mills etc. They however can also drive big fly cutters, boring bars, involute gear cutters and other increasingly arcane cutting tools. The mills fit into high precision Kaulitz which mount to the spindle and are capable of making cuts with a very high degree of accuracy.
You can also mount drilling chucks onto the spindles of mills and perform conventional drilling operations. There are many types of milling machines which can prove difficult to choose when deciding which one to buy. The smallest one is the mini mill which is used by people who make models e.g. model steam engines, model railroads etc. Next up is the mill drill, a tool which borrows attributes from both the drill press and full-sized vertical mill. Mill drills will typically have horsepower in the one horsepower range. On the high end you’ll find the vertical mill, sometimes called the Bridgeport which is the company which introduced it in the first place. They weigh several tons and consist of a motor and spindle, body and knee where the table is mounted and have a greater one a half horsepower range.
