Boring mills that come either as horizontal or vertical can be likened to turning lathes. However, while lathes process the outer diameter or a workpiece, a boring mill cuts the inside part. This is why a boring mill machine is commonly used to make the existing hole bigger or complete the drilled hole. It greatly achieves three important functions, namely, concentricity, straightness, and proper sizing. Unless the inside part is a standard size, the drilling and reaming should be followed by boring to make sure that proper sizing is made for the hole.
Boring mills can be used to create any size of a diameter within the mill’s work envelope. Most often, the size of the working envelope is far bigger than it can be machined on other machines. Longer machine tools have the tendency to either deflect or wander whereas boring mills have the capacity to make sure that the original hole is true and straight. This is because the cutting tool of this machine can be moved straight along the ways, or the spindle is able to go as far as it can into the cavity.
Lastly, boring mills can also make sure that a cylinder has the same thickness as that with its length, thus ensuring concentricity between the outside and inside of the workpiece being machined. When it comes to types of this machine, there are two major ones according to their spindle’s orientation.
Between these two, the horizontal boring machine is more popular and is known in various names, such as horizontal milling machine. It is specially designed to work with relatively huge pieces of parts that are irregular, can’t be rotated easily, and need to be machined on many surfaces. This is because the worktable of this machine can be traversed across and along the machine bed, allowing it to reach all sides or parts of the material being bored.