Questions You Should Know about cnc pipe threading lathe machine supplier

What are the different parts of a CNC Lathe Machine? How do these different components of the CNC Machine Tool fit together?

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In general, CNC Lathe machines comes in the following main configurations:

• Horizontal
• Vertical
• Slant Bed
• Flat Bed
• Standard
• Multi-axis
• Other types, e.g. Swiss Type, Multi-spindle, B-axis

 Depending on their configuration, CNC Lathes may have the following components.

Machine Bed

The bed of a CNC Lathe or CNC Turning Centre forms the main base for the whole machine. It is where the different components of the machine are mounted on. For example, the spindle stock which houses the machine's main spindle; tailstock body; X and Z axis slide; optional Y-axis; and sub-spindle.

To ensure longevity, Hwacheon manufactures machine beds using high quality Meehanite cast iron. These help to limit heat distortion and provides solid mechanical stability. This ensures that the parts machined are consistently accurate.

Main Spindle

Often known as the heart of a machine tool, the main spindle consists of a spindle assembly and the spindle drive system. These are some of the moving parts of the CNC machine tool, and they include motors, gears, and the chuck (more on it later). The C-axis drive which helps to position the material will also be assembled together with the spindle.

Tool holders are normally installed at the turret disk (a rotating disk allowing tools to be positioned and switched), they include both fixed and life tool holders. The life tool drive system is built-in.

To ensure greater quality, Hwacheon manufactures 100% of its own spindles and parts of it. These can tolerate standard or higher optional rpm ranges, run with minimized vibration levels, depending on the application requirements.

Sub-Spindle/ Second Spindle

Separate from the main spindle as an option, the sub-spindle works in sync with the main spindle to complete the first and second cutting operation in a CNC lathe. This improves efficiency and throughput per cycle. When named as a second spindle, the mechanism has the same capacity and power as the main spindle.

Designed with the end-users in mind to achieve higher flexibility and performance, sub-spindles are available optionally on most of Hwacheon's Hi-TECH Series.

Chuck

A chuck is a vice-like structure that grips the workpieces to be machined. It is attached to the main spindle that rotates both the chuck and the workpiece.

To achieve greater productivity in manufacturing, you should consider CNC lathes that offer a variety of options, allowing you to switch to the right tool for your turning jobs. Some of Hwacheon's machine tools have the flexibility and size to accommodate extra-long oil pipe machining and other long shaft applications.

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Guide Way

The guide way enables the tool to move horizontally and vertically to achieve a smooth cutting process. To ensure durability, rigidity and the highest accuracy are needed for this structure.

Hwacheon incorporates highly rigid solid box guides on all axes for its Hi-TECH line of machines to cut down time between processes and to enhance machining precision.

Headstock

Comprising the main motor, the headstock holds the main spindle where the chuck is mounted on. To ensure high performance, you need to consider if your machine tool's headstock can handle high torque at low speed. This is an important consideration for tough materials.

For Hwacheon's Hi-TECH Series, our gear-transmission system provides power and stability. The transmission assembly and spindle motor are also designed to limit heat and vibration transfer.

Tailstock

Tailstock are used to provide an extra support force on the other end of the component. This is necessary when machining long and extra-long work pieces (e.g. Shafts).

For Hwacheon's Hi-TECH Series machines, the tailstock can be programmed to be positioned in semi-auto mode. This allows it to provide firm support and greater precision to the machined parts.

Tool Turret

The turret provides the possibility to change the cutting tools required for machining. Hence it is mounted on the tool turret. The size of the turret is determined by the number and size of tools that will be mounted on it.

To ensure stability and precision in machining, the turret in, for example, Hwacheon's Hi-TECH 550 provides a powerful clamping force, offering an index time of 0.2 sec/setup for fast and more stable machining.

Some of the options available include:

• CNC Lathe Y-axis (for off-center operations)
• CNC Lathe Part Catcher (off-loading of parts automatically)
• CNC Lathe Bar Feeder / Bar Magazine (single bar used in bar feeder while the magazine is used for automatic processes involving a number of bars).
• Sub-spindle
• MC ' drive includes milling, life tools and C-axis operation
• Various bed lengths to cater long shafts or pipes

 

- I had a decent knowledge of manual machining. How to measure, what the cutting should sound like, how to judge if I'm going too fast and so on. You lose all "touch" with CNC and have to be able to rely on your experience more IMHO. As a home machinist, you can’t just be the “button presser” on your CNC. You are the designer, the one who comes up with the fixtures, and all the rest. Solid manual machining experience is a good background for that. This is RonGinger's point.

- I was comfortable with computers being a lot bigger part of my shop experience. This is inescapable when you go to CNC. In particular, you will have to deal with CAD, perhaps some CAM, certainly the machine control (Mach3, for example), and possibly CAM software or g-code programming.

- I was comfortable poking and prodding my way through making the electricals work. There are a lot of electricals with CNC, and if you have a hard time changing a light bulb, you don't want to be dealing with the frustrations of a CNC system. This doesn't mean you need to be able to do component-level diagnosis of circuit boards, but you should be handy with a voltmeter and reading a circuit diagram. Like any machine, the CNC will break sooner or later and you'll have to fix it.

Second, I don't buy the instructor's notion that CNC doesn't "break even" until you need to make several copies of a part. There are a lot of advantages of CNC that are apparent very quickly if you have even a little bit of proficiency:

- It requires less tooling. By the time you pay for a nice DRO and power feeds on all three axes you can just about pay for CNC. Not quite, but close. Add up all the other tooling you may have that is no longer required for CNC and CNC will be cheaper. But, you'd need to pay that bill up front, so it may not matter. Also, to take full advantage, you may need to buy a CAM program so you don't have to g-code it all by hand. That gets REALLY expensive and will eliminate most of the cost savings if not all.

- You can do things that just aren't possible or would be very hard with manual machining. Complex flowing curves and engraving are two examples. We have ball turners for lathes, but profiling such shapes and much more complex ones is trivial with CNC. Also, there are operations that a really talented manual machinist can do that I can't do manually, but can easily do with CNC. There is less of a burden on you, the machinist, to develop that fine art, but you will be called on to develop other fine arts.

- CNC can be faster. The CNC can whip out operations a lot faster than I can, at any rate. A big part of my impetus is this productivity. I simply can't build everything I want to build in my shop fast enough eith the hours available to me. If I invest some of those hours up front in a CNC conversion, I can get more projects done later. The complexity and speed issues are well addressed with shred's "personal effort/reward" idea, which I like a lot.

- Surface finish and precision can go way up with CNC. Did you experience an immediate improvement in surface finish when you got a power feed for your mill? I did. Can you hand feed on your lathe and get as good a finish as with the power feed? It's really hard for me, and the results are not always reliable. Now imagine if you could dial in the perfect speeds and feeds for every operation via CNC. In fact, through features like CSS, the machine will even vary the lathe spindle speed as you move towards the axis to ensure that perfect cutting speed.

Let’s end this by considering some photos. Here is a set of CNC’d pulleys hot of the machine:



Note the surface finish: it's right off the machine with no further polish or other work. How easily can you get that manually? Sure, some part of it is the radically better rigidity of the machine used, but some part is also the perfect feeds and speeds concept I mentioned.

Now consider a more typical HSM project, an upright marine style multiple expansion steam engine. This one was done in a home shop with CNC by jimmibondi (Frank) that won the HMEM November Engine of the Month:



I will venture to say that it wouldn't take me three copies of it for this masterpiece to get done a lot faster and better with CNC than manual machining. Not that you couldn't do it manually (not sure I'd have the patience), and not that it didn't require incredible craftsmanship to do with CNC, but it would just take a lot longer manually.

With all that said, manual machining is tremendous fun and CNC is not for everyone. It's a hobby, do what you like!

First, I would not want to undertake CNC unless:- I had a decent knowledge of manual machining. How to measure, what the cutting should sound like, how to judge if I'm going too fast and so on. You lose all "touch" with CNC and have to be able to rely on your experience more IMHO. As a home machinist, you can’t just be the “button presser” on your CNC. You are the designer, the one who comes up with the fixtures, and all the rest. Solid manual machining experience is a good background for that. This is RonGinger's point.- I was comfortable with computers being a lot bigger part of my shop experience. This is inescapable when you go to CNC. In particular, you will have to deal with CAD, perhaps some CAM, certainly the machine control (Mach3, for example), and possibly CAM software or g-code programming.- I was comfortable poking and prodding my way through making the electricals work. There are a lot of electricals with CNC, and if you have a hard time changing a light bulb, you don't want to be dealing with the frustrations of a CNC system. This doesn't mean you need to be able to do component-level diagnosis of circuit boards, but you should be handy with a voltmeter and reading a circuit diagram. Like any machine, the CNC will break sooner or later and you'll have to fix it.Second, I don't buy the instructor's notion that CNC doesn't "break even" until you need to make several copies of a part. There are a lot of advantages of CNC that are apparent very quickly if you have even a little bit of proficiency:- It requires less tooling. By the time you pay for a nice DRO and power feeds on all three axes you can just about pay for CNC. Not quite, but close. Add up all the other tooling you may have that is no longer required for CNC and CNC will be cheaper. But, you'd need to pay that bill up front, so it may not matter. Also, to take full advantage, you may need to buy a CAM program so you don't have to g-code it all by hand. That gets REALLY expensive and will eliminate most of the cost savings if not all.- You can do things that just aren't possible or would be very hard with manual machining. Complex flowing curves and engraving are two examples. We have ball turners for lathes, but profiling such shapes and much more complex ones is trivial with CNC. Also, there are operations that a really talented manual machinist can do that I can't do manually, but can easily do with CNC. There is less of a burden on you, the machinist, to develop that fine art, but you will be called on to develop other fine arts.- CNC can be faster. The CNC can whip out operations a lot faster than I can, at any rate. A big part of my impetus is this productivity. I simply can't build everything I want to build in my shop fast enough eith the hours available to me. If I invest some of those hours up front in a CNC conversion, I can get more projects done later. The complexity and speed issues are well addressed with shred's "personal effort/reward" idea, which I like a lot.- Surface finish and precision can go way up with CNC. Did you experience an immediate improvement in surface finish when you got a power feed for your mill? I did. Can you hand feed on your lathe and get as good a finish as with the power feed? It's really hard for me, and the results are not always reliable. Now imagine if you could dial in the perfect speeds and feeds for every operation via CNC. In fact, through features like CSS, the machine will even vary the lathe spindle speed as you move towards the axis to ensure that perfect cutting speed.Let’s end this by considering some photos. Here is a set of CNC’d pulleys hot of the machine:Note the surface finish: it's right off the machine with no further polish or other work. How easily can you get that manually? Sure, some part of it is the radically better rigidity of the machine used, but some part is also the perfect feeds and speeds concept I mentioned.Now consider a more typical HSM project, an upright marine style multiple expansion steam engine. This one was done in a home shop with CNC by jimmibondi (Frank) that won the HMEM November Engine of the Month:I will venture to say that it wouldn't take me three copies of it for this masterpiece to get done a lot faster and better with CNC than manual machining. Not that you couldn't do it manually (not sure I'd have the patience), and not that it didn't require incredible craftsmanship to do with CNC, but it would just take a lot longer manually.With all that said, manual machining is tremendous fun and CNC is not for everyone. It's a hobby, do what you like!

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