Tom Lipton is a career metalworker from the San Francisco Bay area who has worked at various job shops. For more information, visit his blog and YouTube video channel.
A typical CNC lathe program is quite short compared to some of the mammoth CAM-generated programs for milling machines. Here are some tips and tricks to programming a CNC lathe.
Like many in the industry, when I started in the machining world it was on a manual lathe. I have a special place in my heart for lathes. That includes CNC lathes, the next step up for aspiring machinists.
During the summer, writes the Shop Operations columnist in the October 2013 issue of Cutting Tool Engineering, it gets pretty hot in a shop that's not air conditioned. With sweat running down my semibald head, I was trying to get a part set up in a CNC lathe.
Tom Lipton, the author of Cutting Tool Engineering's Shop Operations column, shares a trick he learned that reveals an interesting use of relatively crash-proof soft metal or plastic bed plates on a milling machine.
Continuing the theme of the previous three columns, here are additional tips for enhancing the operation of a CNC milling machine from Shop Operations columnist Tom Lipton.
The Shop Operations column suggests that you should use every tool, trick and option at your disposal to get jobs out the door as quickly as possible because speed and momentum reduce costs when applied to part processing.
Anybody with half a brain can immediately see the usefulness of computer-controlled equipment. The ability of a machine to telescope the work processes so they run in parallel instead of series can turn a single machinist into a one-person army.
A unique manual milling method is available for generating geometrically true spherical surfaces. This technique can be used to machine convex and concave spherical surfaces. Other than the milling machine, the only tools needed are a boring head and a rotary table.
Continuing and concluding the theme of my previous two columns, this month's installment provides additional tips for enhancing the operation of a manual milling machine.