Drilling machine

A wood lathe carves wood into chair or table legs. Vertical lathes shape plastic and more and gunsmithing lathes fashion the barrel of a gun. Metalworking lathes are versatile and easily at home with a hobbyist or a professional.

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Lathes obviously work differently, utilizing a stationary cutting tool to trim the metal spinning around. Each lathe is a machine tool designed for heavy duty work, but modern lathes are designed for precision cutting and simplistic machining operation.

Nor is a metal lathe limited to specific alloys or metals; some metals may be easier to work with, but in theory any metal can be turned on a lathe. Here’s a delicate piece baby’s cup in pewter:

A skilled craftsman can turn a lump of metal into a cup, a lampstand, or even a chess piece with a lathe machine. There’s a huge variety of potential applications, and the ability to freehand the cutting and carving stages means that each piece still retains the unique touch of the craftsman.

Its extremely unlikely that the code itself is causing the issue, its very common however to have problems on stepper-motor/hobby type machines.

Lathes on an industrial scale can be quite large, but a toolroom lathe tends to be a somewhat smaller machine tool. A metal lathe is the mainstay of many small machine shops or tool-and-die companies, due to its versatility. Beyond the machine shop, many other craftsmen and hobbyists find a lathe indispensable. You can use a lathe to create parts for an old car:

I'm using the 3D Parallel strategy to clear out material from a guitar neck model. I zero the Z-axis at the bottom of the material and run the machine.At some point the machine starts cutting fresh air so I stop the process. When I return the bit to XYZ zero, the Z axis has somehow gained 6.1mm from it's original zero position.

Lathes, in some form, have been around since the Egyptians. Think of the resemblance to the pottery wheel; thrown pottery has been around for thousands of years, so it makes sense that lathes, which follow a similar principle but instead use a workpiece moving against a stationary cutting tool, would come along afterwards.

Lathing

With the invention of the engine lathe, which used an automatic feed to the cutting tool, basic lathes were used for precision metalworking. Even then, each lathe was unique, but the lathe operation was consistent.  Engine lathes helped usher in the Industrial revolution, which in turn introduced steam-powered lathes, capable of ever-greater rotation rates and the torque to rotate heavier parts. Lathes were now heavy duty machining tools. Like the milling machine, the lathe machine simplified the machining process as they became even more complete.The next great leap forward came in the second half of the twentieth century, with the advent of Computer Numerical Control (CNC). CNC-equipped lathes allowed operators to program a set of instructions for each machine tool. This allowed the exact duplication of those instructions, which meant parts that were increasingly accurate, and reduced the number of operators necessary to keep each machining tool running simultaneously. Today’s innovation provides increasingly precise CNC programming, with ever-growing numbers of axes.

In this case, the clay is the workpiece. The wheel is a rudimentary lathe, turning the workpiece at a set speed, and keeping it in one place. The head and cutting bits, in the example above, are the workman’s hands. They are the moving part – moving along the length of the workpiece (the “y” axis), and in and out towards the center of the workpiece (the “x” axis).

CNC machine

On the industrial side, big lathes produce countless numbers of parts: driveshafts on cars, legs for tables, etc. Heavy-duty, large-scale lathe tools can be used to turn a giant metal cone or disc, while small-scale machines can cut out a metal chess piece.

The most basic lathes allowed craftsmen to free-hand the removal of material. Metal lathes and wood lathes technologically improved and eventually progressed into machine tools with integral heads. Each head mounted on cross-slides that ran the length of the lathe bed, over which the workpiece would rotate.

Today each industrial metalworking lathe is fully automated, with heads that can hold multiple bits. This means that the same lathe can perform numerous processes – rough bits for grinding out material, finer ones for refining parts, even bits for sanding and polishing. With a CNC lathe, a trained operator can program a metalworking lathe to bring a single workpiece from raw material to finished product with no human involvement at all once the program is initiated. A few individuals can oversee an entire production floor equipped with CNC lathes.

Lathemachine

its actually very common for it to repeat the error of lost steps. There will be one line where it accelerates too fast, the controller is over buffered, or there is a mechanical issue at one node along your linear motion system. It could even be something overheating, and of course that will show up at the same location as it takes the same amount of time for the heat to rise.

Metal Lathe Projects How to Become a CNC Operator A Brief Introduction to CNC Machining A Guide to Buying a Metal Lathe CNC Programming: A Master Guide

Milling machine

The machine executed a perfect 3D parallel cut on the opposite face of the neck, also, I have tried this process four times and the error is exactly the same each time. So no, it's extremely unlikely my machine is skipping steps, the error would be inconsistent.

What is a lathe used for? Whatever you want or need! Go out and see what you can do with this incredibly versatile machine tool!

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lathe中文

Most woodworking or machine shop tools are easily recognized. Drills, punches, and vises are fairly simple tools with a clear purpose. Other machines might be a bit more complicated and lathes, particularly high-end ones, fall into this category.At its heart, a lathe is a simplistic device, designed to hold a section of material as a turning tool carves, cuts or shapes it. This is called the workpiece. Unlike a simple vise, a lathe not only holds a workpiece, but also rotates it. This allows another part of the machine, the head, to move along the workpiece, holding various cutting tools  to shape the workpiece.

Nearly everything! But today’s uses tend to fall in the categories of “industrial” and “artisan” machine tools. Industrial uses cover everything from a locally-owned machine shop making replacement parts for old cars, to state-owned enterprises producing heavy machinery. On the other end of the spectrum, craftsmen are using lathes to produce unique and breathtaking pieces in wood, metal, glass, epoxy, and nearly every other material imaginable.

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I've been looking at the problem forensically today and it appears that it's an issue with the Z-axis direction control; rather than gliding down into the cut, it's moving upwards. All ops thereafter are off axis.This would mean that there's a problem with the controller S/W (Mach 4) or the controller board. However, both of these perform perfectly apart from this particular strategy. I have informed the relevant vendors accordingly.In the meantime, I have replaced the 3D parallel strategy with a 3D pocket and I'll run the machine again tomorrow.