Lathe knife is the main vehicle for turning the workpiece rotation processing machine. Lathe can also be used in the drills, reaming drill, reamer, tap, die and Knurling tools corresponding processing. The main axis lathe for processing, plates, sets and other rotating surface of the workpiece, mechanical manufacturing and repair plant in the most widely used for a class of machine tools.
Ancient lathe by hand or foot through the rope so that the workpiece rotation, and carrying of knives and cutting. In 1817, another British Roberts used pulley and back round of four agencies to change the spindle speed.
In order to increase the degree of mechanization and automation, 1845, the United States invented the fitch turret lathe; in 1848, the United States appeared to round lathe; in 1873, the United States, Spencer made a uniaxial automatic lathe, and soon he made three axis automatic lathe; appeared in the early 20th century by a separate motor-driven lathe gearbox with gear.
After World War I, as a result of arms, vehicles and other machinery industry needs a variety of high-performance automatic lathes and the rapid development of specialized lathes. In order to improve the productivity of small-volume workpiece, 40 end of the decade, with hydraulic profiling lathe device to promote, at the same time, multi-knife lathe also be developed. 50 years, developed with perforated cards, latch plate and set aside encoder control lathe and so on. Numerical control technology in the 60's to start for the lathe, after the 70's have developed rapidly.
Lathe in accordance with purposes and functions of the district is divided into many types.
Lathe processing object Canton, spindle speed and feed rate adjustment range, the workpiece can be processed outside the surface, end and inside and outside the thread. This lathe mainly by manual workers, low productivity, apply to a single, small-batch production and repair workshop.
Turret lathe with a rotary lathe and can hold more than the tool turret or tool carrier back to round turret, the first time in the workpiece clamping followed by workers using a different tool to complete a variety of processes, and apply to bulk production.
Automatic lathe according to certain procedures for small and medium-sized auto-complete the multi-process workpiece processing, can automatically feed up and down, repeat the same number of workpiece processing for large, mass production.
Multi-knife semi-automatic lathes have uniaxial, multi-axis, horizontal and vertical division. Uniaxial horizontal layout of the form of ordinary lathe, but two sets of tool carrier mounted on a spindle, respectively, before and after, or up and down, for processing plates, rings and shaft workpieces, its productivity than ordinary lathe to raise 3 to 5 times.
Copying lathes can be modeled on a model or the shape of sample size, auto-complete workpiece machining cycle, apply to the shape of more complex workpieces and small-batch and mass production, high productivity than ordinary lathe 10 ~ 15 times. How turret, multi-axis, card disc, such as the type of vertical.
Vertical lathe spindle perpendicular to the horizontal plane, the workpiece clamping horizontal rotary table, tool carrier in the beams or columns on the mobile. Applicable to processing larger, heavier, difficult in ordinary lathe installed workpiece, generally divided into single-column and double two broad categories.
