A Quick Guide to Jet Mill Drill

Jet mill drills are stationary-type machine tools. Similar to a milling machine, it rotates a wide variety of cutting tools to remove the metal materials from the surface of metal parts. The drill press which is driven by the belt can further enlarge, finish or form the holes in the metal parts to achieve tapping, reaming, and more machining applications. With a jet mill drill, the operator can both drill the holes and create the shapes by milling on two different axes in a single machine.

What Is a Jet Mill Drill?

A jet mill drill is a combination of a milling machine and drill press, which is the lighter and utmost versatile alternative to a vertical milling machine. The machine tool is also called a mill drill combo lathe machine or simply a mill/drill. The jet mill drill is equipped with a belt-driven drill press and the coordinate capability of the X-axis and Y-axis of the milling table and also a firm collet that holds the cutting tools with the spindle. The locking collet in the structure can prevent the cutters from falling from the spindle while the lateral forces affect the tools. Jet mill drill is typically employed by small shops and maintenance departments.

With a greatly light construction, they have numerous advantages when compared to the large milling machines or drill press which have relatively simple functions. First of all, jet mill drill saves rooms for the shop when producing complex machining simultaneously on multiple axes. The flexibility of the jet mill drill also makes it cost-efficient, and ideal for many light-duty machining applications which may be much more expensive than other machine tools. 

Jet mill drills are stationary-type machine tools. Similar to a milling machine, it rotates a wide variety of cutting tools to remove the metal materials from the surface of metal parts. The drill press which is driven by the belt can further enlarge, finish or form the holes in the metal parts to achieve tapping, reaming, and more machining applications. With a jet mill drill, the operator can both drill the holes and create the shapes by milling on two different axes in a single machine.
 

Milling Table on Jet Mill Drill

The milling table on a jet mill drill employs the milling cutters to shear the materials away under rotation, creating numerous separate, small cuts via the teeth and flutes on the cutters. The milling process on the worktable of a mill drill machine is completed when the small teeth spin rapidly or advance slowly in the workpieces, leading to multiple face cutting points with great precision. These rotary cutting tools in jet mill drill work along the X and Y-axis. During the cutting, metal chips of the materials will be sheared to shape the profiles of the products, and the process is also called shear deformation. 

Unlike drill presses which have to stay in a vertical position while the drill bits are cutting the holes, the milling table of the jet mill drill allows the bit to rotate and also be altered to unique angles for customized machining operations. Another difference between drilling and milling operations is the vibration and shaking. Milling operations employ a great amount of force with almost no vibration during the machining tasks, providing a cleaner, free metal debris environment. 

Although the quality and efficiency of milling tasks on a large milling machine and on a jet mill drill cannot be the same, using this flexible equipment brings many benefits that the milling machine does not have. For example, milling machines are considerably heavy and large, taking more time and effort for the workers to move and install them to another working area. Even the smallest milling machine is not light and convenient enough to be considered portable. In addition, the large milling machine with an advanced servo controller is typically reliable but costly. However, compared to the milling machine, a jet mill drill is much lighter in weight and economical for flexible metalworks.
 

:: Read More: Consider These Things Before You Buy a Mill Drill Machine

Drill Press on Jet Mill Drill

The jet mill drill combines the belt-driven drill press and a milling lathe machine, making it effective for drilling and milling jobs but has fewer drawbacks than the drill presses. The general drill presses form the holes in a vertical direction via the drill bit, causing the holes to have spiral feed marks on the inner surfaces. In addition, the holes formed by the drill press, including the belt-driven drill presses on the jet mill drill, have sharp edges on the side and burrs on the exit side of the drill bits. During drilling tasks, the pressing motions generate residual stress around the formed holes, and the surfaces being drilled present a thin layer of significantly stressed material. The conditions may lead to corrosion or cracking. 

Chips are created both on the milling drilling tasks on a jet mill drill. As a result, the nature of the metal chips is important for the user when selecting suitable machined materials and machine tools. In drilling tasks, chips may be in a long helical or small flake form, depending on the material type as well as the tool wear of the drill bits.

Combining the function of drilling jobs on a jet mill drill significantly shortens the production time since drilling tasks are often considered secondary machining work used for finishing. Employing the belt-driven drill press on the jet mill drill allows the operators to save time especially for high volume production. When using a typical drill press, the largest drawback is that the drill bit cannot cut in multiple directions, and the tapering applications will be more challenging. However, the jet mill drill permits multiple axes milling operations and can accommodate different sorts of cutting tools, allowing both the beginner and experienced users to raise the accuracy and quality of the machining tasks.

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