Milling
Milling can be interpreted as grinding, cutting or crushing of materials from larger into smaller pieces for various reasons and to various levels of precision.
There are many, many types of mills, they might be named after the material they grind (such as flour, coffee, metal, wood pellet or textile mills), their design (such as box, saw, disc or hammer mills) or their power source, which often reflects a building type (such as windmill, flour mill or tide mill).
NB - 3D Printing, At a glance, was published by BSRIA in September 2017. It defines subtractive manufacturing or machining as: ‘The process of creating objects by the controlled removal of material from a billet or casting. The processes that have this common theme of controlled material removal, are collectively known as subtractive manufacturing.’
It defines milling as: ‘A machining process using rotary cutters to remove material from a workpiece.’
It defines CNC milling as: 'Computer numerical control milling; the same process as milling but is controlled by a computer programme.'
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