The development of unmanned machining systems has been a recent focus of manufacturing research. Computer Numerical Control (CNC) units, which monitor and control many tightly coupled machining tasks, are inseparable parts of the unmanned manufacturing system. This thesis addresses the detailed design and analysis of a modular CNC system for a milling machine. The feed drive control system of the machine tool is thoroughly studied. The mathematical model for the feed drive control system, which consists of a motion controller, power amplifiers and DC-servo motors, is developed and experimentally verified. A method of estimating cutting forces from current drawn by feed drive motors is developed. The viability of the current sensor as a feeding-force sensing component is illustrated and experimentally tested on the milling machine. Successful application of the current sensor to tool breakage detection in milling operation is presented. The performance of the multi-axis contouring system in precision machining is discussed. The contouring errors induced by feed drive positioning systems in CNC machine tools is investigated using the state space model of the CNC system. The influence of the cutting force on the accuracy of machining is shown to be negligible for feed drives driven by ball leadscrews. Various control strategies for the improvement of machining accuracy are tested in the simulation studies.