Turning for success

Turning centres play a significant part in the success of the Singapore precision engineering industry.  Precision engineering contributes in an important supportive role as enabler to other industries, such as aerospace, oil & gas, semiconductor and medical devices.  It is used to produce a diverse range of components from the smallest semiconductor chips, to the biggest drill bits for oil exploration, and the most technologically advanced parts for aerospace engineering.
Turning centres, also known as lathes, come in two versions: horizontal turning centres and vertical turning centres.  Vertical turning centres are usually used for large diameter workpieces.  Nowadays, almost all turning centres are controlled by computers.  These computer numeric controlled (CNC) turning centres, based on pre-programmed commands, rotate workpiece and move cutting tools to achieve a high degree of precision.
Turning produces cylindrical, rotational and axial-symmetric parts that have many features such as holes, grooves, threads, tapers, and contoured surfaces.  Turning centres work on the external surfaces with a single point cutting tool machining a rotating workpiece.  However, it also has the option of a multiple tool setup.
Parts formed completely by turning are often used in limited quantity for prototypes.  Turning is also used as a secondary process to refine or add features on workpieces that were already worked on by a different process.  For example, because of the high tolerances and quality surface finish that turning offers, it is ideal for adding precision rotational features to a workpiece whose basic shape had already been formed.
In general, the advantages of a turning centre are: compatibility of all materials, good tolerances and short lead time.  The disadvantages are: it can only be used for rotational parts, parts may require several operations with different machines, high equipment costs, significant tool wear and large amount of scrap.

High performance turning centres

Haas high-performance turning centres feature massive headstock castings with symmetric ribs for rigidity and thermal stability, on-the-fly wye-delta switching for peak performance throughout the rpm range and high-volume coolant systems for efficient chip removal.  They also offer next-generation digital servomotors on all axes for precise motion control and are available with fully programmable tailstocks.  Robust tool turrets index to the next tool quickly gives reduced cycle times, and live tooling and c-axis options are available on most models to perform secondary operations without re-fixturing.
The Haas ST-10 turning centre provides an economical solution for small parts turning in a compact package that is loaded with full-sized features.  It was designed from the ground up to be extremely rigid, highly accurate and very thermally stable.  All castings were optimised using finite element analysis to produce the most rigid designs while improving chip and coolant flow and simplifying maintenance and service. 
Mazak turning centres are teamed with Mazatrol conversational CNC.  On-machine programming is based on question and answer dialogue between operator and control.  The Mazatrol CNC already contains a database of recommended cutting speeds and feeds, tool management, tool path checking and 3D solid simulation of the cutting program, as such making programming intuitive even for less experienced operators.  As cutting tool performance is improved, new parameters are easily added to the database and applied across all programs.
The Mazak Slant Turn Nexus is a heavy duty CNC turning centre.  It is designed for large part turning applications likeNike Roshe Run Men