Mechanical milling is an industrial processing obtained by chip removal that allows to produce a wide range of surfaces through rotary motion of a multi-sharp tool.

Mechanical milling usually involves different processing steps: from roughing to finishing.

• The first step aims at removing a large amount of excess material as quickly and economically as possible.
• The finishing allows, trough the removal of a smaller volume of metal, to produce the item in accordance with the initial design in terms of dimensions, tolerance and surface roughness.

Milling is a typical process provided by modern CNC machining centers. These numerical control machines enable the performing of different operations on multiple surfaces of the same workpiece in a single setup. These machines usually have multiple axes of motion and an automatic tool magazine with inserts that enable not only milling but also drilling, boring, reaming, turning and mechanical tapping operations. The machining centers enable the spindle slant on one or more rotary axes or the combination of a spindle rotation axis and a table tilt axis. This enables the processing of even more complex geometries.