Making holes in metal is probably the most common operation in
any machine shop. Specialized drilling and boring tools do a
fine job making accurate holes. Increasingly though, shops are
successfully using interpolated milling cutters to drill and
bore blind and through-holes. Usually this operation is
performed with end mills. Because of the improvements in machine
tool design, CNC and servo response, and especially in the
design and manufacture of freer-cutting tool geometries, some
face mills are now capable of pulling double-duty. They can
handle linear milling of planar surfaces and helical milling of
holes. To find out when and why a shop might consider
interpolation of a face milling cutter over traditional end
mills, drills and boring tools to cut holes, we talked to Jeff
Fox, training and applications manager for Widia North America,
a cutting tool maker; and Jim Turner, senior application
engineer at Widia's parent, Milacron. They are using circular
and helical interpolation of face milling cutters