To validate the reliability of the sinking technology of fullface shaft boring machines (SBMs), a case study is conducted on the Ninghai pumped storage and ventilation shaft; design and application of the fullface SBM systems, such as upper muck discharge, excavation, attitude adjustment, and downshaft realtime monitoring are investigated. The results reveal the following: (1) The arrangement of circumferential drain grooves on the shaft wall and parameter optimization of boring and mucking guarantee successful boring by SBMs in a watercontaining tuff stratum. (2) The front cutters fulfill the operation requirements, and the gripper system and cutter replacement tooling ensure the safe replacement of the front cutters. (3) The specialized attitude adjustment method in SBMs can fulfill the precision requirements. (4) The visualized operation of mucking in a dust environment can be realized based on muck weighting and heatimaging principles. (5) The realtime positioning of operators in a shaft can be realized by using a layered plane positioning system of SBMs based on Ultrawideband.