Igor Chudov wrote: > I had a disagreement with my employee today. I said that a retrofitted CNC > milling machine, like my Bridgeport Interact, is supremely useful as a shop > tool, but a CNC lathe has very little usefulness. I felt that there is not > really much that one can do with a CNC lathe. He disagreed, but could not > offer specifics. > > I want to see what you think, is a CNC lathe all that useful for someone > who is nota job shop or a manufacturing operation. > It absolutely depends on the parts you make. If you make mostly rectangular parts, a mill is an obvious choice. If you make free-form carved parts, it is also quite good.
But, if you largely make round parts, perhaps for tube fittings, valves, sliding rods and pistons, etc. then a lathe is WAY more efficient. I have not CNC'd my lathe, as I rarely do production parts of that nature, But I can easily see where a different mix of parts to be made would make a CNC lathe way more useful. Also, there are things that are TRIVIAL on a CNC lathe that are harder to do on a manual lathe. I am thinking of things with tapers, or tapered threads. A couple lines of G-code vs. a couple hours of exacting setup and calibration. Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 positioned as A LEADER in The Forrester Wave(TM): Endpoint Security, Q1 2013 and "remains a good choice" in the endpoint security space. For insight on selecting the right partner to tackle endpoint security challenges, access the full report. http://p.sf.net/sfu/symantec-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
