CNC turning is one of the central methods of manufacturing. It can produce cylindrical parts with various contours.<\/p>\n
In machine building, you cannot bypass shafts to transmit power from the motor to the moving parts. Shafts, of course, require turning. But CNC turning and boring find a lot of use in various industries to produce usually axi-symmetric parts.<\/p>\n
Turning is a subtractive machining process that uses a cutting tool to remove material for creating cylindrical parts<\/strong>. The tool itself moves along the axis of the machined part while the part is rotating, creating a helical toolpath.<\/p>\n
The term turning refers to producing parts by cutting operations on the external surface. The opposite of turning is boring<\/strong>, whereby lathe machines are used for creating hollow parts, for example.<\/p>\n
The lathe machine is historically one of the earliest of its kind for producing parts in a semi-automated fashion. Today, most companies provide CNC turning services<\/a>. This means that the process is largely automated from start to finish.<\/p>\n
What does the turning process actually comprise of? While the cutting itself is pretty straightforward, we are going to look at the whole sequence here which actually starts from creating a CAD file.<\/p>\n
The steps of the process are:<\/p>\n
The first 2 steps can be seen as separate or going hand-in-hand. One way is to just use a CAD program to create the files and send them into production. The manufacturing engineer will then create the G code and the M code for the machining job.<\/p>\n