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Yesterday was our first lab of Production Engineering, now in the third year we have to perform task related to the industry and so we were shown a very useful and important manufacturing machine called The Lathe machine. It was a very simple version and we were given a material which we had to turn to particular dimensions.
The working includes a case in which the work piece is locked by a key, then there is a cutting tool which can be adjusted both horizontally and vertically. The work piece rotates around 8 different revolutions per minute, with gear teeth adjusted to make each revolution possible. The gears are adjusted manually in that version. It's such a fascinating piece of engineering our instructor told us that this is the mother of all machines.
Our work started by adjusting the RPM to 480, After that first we did the facing by grinding the outer surface of the cylindrical object and then had to reduce the diameter of the material. That is done by first just touching the cutting tool and locking th horizontal axis and then the scale is adjusted to the depth to be reduced and when the cutting tool is againg made into contact with the material the cutting starts. The small waste coming out of the material is quite hot if you are concentrated and cut carefully it's colour is white and temperature is approximately 400 Centigrade which is quite hot.
This was only our first stage and this is the final product after it we put our roll numbers on the work piece and will work on it further as the semester continues.