OVERVIEW

Only a couple of decades or so back - in the late nineteen eighties and even in the early nineteen nineties - just considering a simple milling operation to be done on a CNC lathe was rare and virtually unheard of. Much has changed since these early days and modern CNC lathes today - the true turning centers - are unrecognizable from their early predecessors. That is not to say that the ubiquitous two axis rear slant bed CNC lathe is obsolete - on the contrary - it is still the main machine tool of choice for general round and conical machining. What has changed does not defy the original concept at all - in fact, it adds to it. The concept itself has always been quite simple for machine design engineers - 'let's design a CNC lathe in such a way that it can handle a few simple milling operations and save at least one machine setup and related handling'. With technology advancing at a very rapid rate, it became possible to provide not only some rather simple milling capabilities, but also many very complex machining processes as well.

There are many possible combinations of turning machines equipped with milling capabilities, using so called live tooling - an independently powered non-turning tools. Descriptions such as 'rotary tools' and 'driven tools' are also frequently used. In terms of number of axes, having six, seven, nine or even more axes is not that...