Milling machines and machining centers

A milling machine is a manually-operated or numerically-controlled (NC) machine tool with a rotating spindle that can accommodate a milling cutter, a multi-edged tool, as well as other tools such as drills, boring bars and taps, enabling a wide variety of machining operations to be carried out.

A machining center is also a machine with a rotating spindle, capable of similar machining operations, but whose operation is automated thanks to a numerical control (NC) and an automatic tool changer.

The two types of machine therefore have a great deal in common, which is why they are covered in the same study.

1818 Eli Whitney milling machine (USA), one of the first milling machines;

1862 Brown and Sharp universal milling machine (USA), exhibited in Paris in 1867.

After more than a century of development, in which the milling machine was one of the main machines used in workshops, a major evolution took place with numerical control and the appearance of the machining center;

1942-45 first CNC milling machines for specific applications (Bendix USA) ;

1958 MilwaukeeMatic machine from Kearney Trecker (USA), the first machining center. The term machining center is introduced into technical vocabulary;

1959 MU machine from Ateliers GSP (France), Europe's first machining center;

1964 Omniline from Sundstrand (USA), the first FMS (Flexible Machining System).

A wide variety of milling machine models (several hundred) in terms of size, construction and use are available in the workshops. This presentation will be limited to the most typical machines currently on sale, and whose distribution seems assured for some years to come. It will not include machines that are no longer on the market, or whose rapidly declining sales mean that they will be discontinued in the short term. With this in mind, hand-operated milling machines (classic, conventional) will occupy a relatively small share, especially as their acquisition cost remains lower than that of numerically-controlled machines and machining centers, and their use is more widely known.

For machining centers, the presentation will be limited to isolated or stand-alone machining centers with automatic tool changers, manual workpiece loading on the table, or integrated pallets. It will not deal with machines linked to the external environment: robot loading of parts, pallet queues serving several machines, integration into a flexible workshop. These applications are...