Turning

When turning, the workpiece (a piece of relatively rigid material such as wood, metal, plastic, or stone) is rotated and a cutting tool is traversed along 1, 2, or 3 axes of motion to produce precise diameters and depths.

Although now quite rare, early lathes could even be used to produce complex geometric figures, even the platonic solids; although since the advent of CNC it has become unusual to use non-computerized toolpath control for this purpose.

Those types of turning processes can produce various shapes of materials such as straight, conical, curved, or grooved workpieces.

The tool's axes of movement may be literally a straight line, or they may be along some set of curves or angles, but they are essentially linear (in the non mathematical sense).

This process, also called parting off or cutoff, is used to create deep grooves which will remove a completed or part-complete component from its parent stock.

Field and maintenance shops generally use a lathe that can be adapted to many operations and that is not too large to be moved from one work site to another.

The various angles, shapes, and sizes of a single-point cutting tool have direct relation to the resulting surface of a workpiece in machining operations.

The machine tool and its components must be able to withstand these forces without causing significant deflections, vibrations, or chatter during the operation.