Milling Machine

My milling machine has both vertical and horizontal capabilities with separate drive systems for each.

The same face face mill arbors, drill chuck, collet chuck, etc that I use in the vertical drive also fit in the horizontal drive as they employ the same spigot, and I sometimes have need to use those arbors in the horizontal drive for specific tasks, although horizontal face milling with these cutters is somewhat limited by the presence of the vise.

By judicious use of ganged cutters etc, you can achieve an entirely satisfactory face finish using just the horizontal capability, and in some circumstances can be faster than the vertical face cutters, but vertical is generally mush easier, especially on my mill where, to use the horizontal feature, I need to rotate the entire upper portion of the mill 180° to bring the outer support for the horizontal arbor into play.

Obviously, if you only have a horizontal mill, slot cutting etc. becomes a tad more difficult, and you can find that you require a vastly more complex set of cutters to achieve the same results as you could with a vertical mill with a lot less hardware.

Surely there must be a User Manual that came with it?

Why would anyone buy such a thing without having some understanding as to how it works?