What is a milling machine?
A milling machine is a machine tool, usually used for metal cutting. The most significant difference from a lathe is the rotation of the cutting tools, rather than relying on the rotation of the workpiece. Three-axis milling machine is equipped with X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis, they also have additional axes of rotation, if needed, such as a five-axis, which has three linear axes and two rotary axes, allowing the cutting tools to operate on a 180-degree hemisphere or more.
The milling machine is used to cut the surface, it can mill out the formed surface, the spiral groove, or the tooth profile of the gear through the special-shaped milling cutter. During milling, the workpiece is mounted on the worktable or the indexing head, and the milling cutter performs the cutting motion in a rotating way. The cutting motion is supplemented by the feed motion of the worktable. This method of machining the surface of the workpiece with a milling cutter as a tool is what we call milling.