[almo0797]

Can anyone out there help! We manufacture a lot of parts out of plate Aluminium which are basically profilled drilled and pocketed all in 1 hit. A lot of these plates have tapped holes in the sides which at present are added manually. This means the plates are marked out or drilled with a jig, but it can take as long to do this as it does to machine all the other features. We cannot use angled drilled heads due to lack of space in the carousel and these holes can be in all the sides. Does anyone else have this problem?
I would like to use something like an old horizontal miller with a large bed to support the plates easily whilst drilling. On some of the larger plates (2M X 2M) we use a radial arm drill which is not ideal.

[Geof]

If I was faced with this problem I think I would look for an old horizontal boring mill with a built-in rotay table. This way you clamp them down once and do all sides.

[Kevin77]

Buy a Van Norman :-)