OF the topic - what is the worlds largest lathe down to the smallest

[FPV_GTp]

hi guys


just curious here , what is the worlds larges lathe you know of ?

also what is the worlds smallest lathe you know of ?

do u have pictures or links to a site just post them in here

huge machinery always has facinated me , didn't know where to post this thread so i chose in this section

here is the worlds smallest NC lathe i found (Numerical Control Micro-Lathe )

http://unit.aist.go.jp/amri/group/fi...croLathe1e.htm

here is the worlds biggest lathe i have found - a huge Niles lathe in pieces there are more pics if u go to the main page www.georgewamachinery.com

the chuck and headstock of the Niles lathe

www.georgewamachinery.com/Niles%20102%20x%2049'%20Lathe1.gif


sorry guys this is of the topic

cheers

[Jay Kyle]

Not sure about lathe but I think the world's biggest mill is in Delta (south of Vancouver) used for milling aircraft wing spars for heavy aircraft.

[lakeside]

The Largest Lathe That I've Seen Was At The Old Foreriver Shipyard In Quincy, Ma. Swing 120" Over Cairrage Center To Center 80 Feet
The Largest Mill That I've Read About Was At Tha Phill. Shipyard In The 1940 It Was A Moster Over Six Stories High Or Some Crazy # Like That I Think It Was A Gidding And Lewis

[Mcgyver]

this ones for sale from a Toronto dealer, one of the bigger that i've seen. wife'd kill me if i felt sorry for it and brought it home. when they're really big, they are usually either very long between centres or very big swings (40' with th face plate going into a pit), and nothing between centres. this is one of the largest conventional formats i've seen.

http://uen.hsix.com/q/webinv/002015=...ist,,,20059840,,

[ZipSnipe]

Jesus look at the size of the chuck on that thang..

[lwill]

I am not sure if you would accually call it a lathe in the normal sence, but I saw a show on TLC or History Channel about building a huge ship. In it they installed a multi-part drive shaft into the ship and then turned the ends to match each other. If I remember correctly, the shaft was like 36" round and 1/3 the length of the ship. Using that as scale, it looked like the chips it was cutting were better than 2" wide from a splined end. From the video you could hear the metalic "PLINK" as each came off and hit the deck. I wish I could remember what it was about and find a link.
Like I said, not exactly a conventional lathe, but it was huge and I found it very impressive!

[lwill]

Small tools:

http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/Jordan.htm
http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/images/Jordan12.JPG
http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/images/Jordan13.JPG

All though they are models, you can see one being used to make parts for another one. Again I am very impressed.

[vacpress]

wow. that stuff is so impressive..

i wonder what they used in that tiny cnc machine.... it really seemed to be having an easy time with that ketal...

[whirlybomber]

Biggest lathes will almost certainly have been for shipbuilding, most likely during WWII. (IIRC) Even modern container ships don't have the same HP-per-shaft as the big battleships of WWII. Maybe the current nuclear aircraft carriers exceed that, but by how much?

Also, the lathes to turn the gun barrels for battleships were pretty big. Even the modern ones for tank/artillery barrels are huge by most standards. And extremly accurate to boot.

I saw a discovery/history/whatever chanel show on the moving gates they have across one of the gates into the north sea in holland. Each gate pivots around one 5m (or similar) spherical bearing. The only place they could get to make the bearings was an old cold-war era machine shop in poland or some place. The machine had a horizontal table that rotated (like a lazy susan) with a fixed overhead gantry that had x-y travel, so the tool approached the work piece from above. As I recall it was originaly built to machine turret rings for battleships (it's those battleships again damnit! I was born in the wrong century to play with all the good toys).

As for how small is small?

I've seen the logo for IBM spelt out in atoms with a scanning electron microscope. Not with my unassisted eye, obviously.

[swarfmacdaddy]

Just saw it on the history channel last night. Was turning prop shafts over 100 feet long for nuclear destroyers. Had a 150 h.p. motor on it. They tightened the cutters down with an impact wrench. Very impressive.

[posix]

Some months ago I posted a picture of a gantry that I came across. It had platforms you could walk on high up on the "rails". And not far away from it on the ground was a (8-jaw if I remember correctly) chuck that you could park a car on. Maybe 4m in diameter. I believe it was actually the 4th axis for the gantry as there was a similarly-sized hole in the ground underneath the gantry.

The servos on that thing were roughly the size of your household washing machine.

[FPV_GTp]

hi

here is another huge sucker of a lathe

http://www.manufacturingcenter.com/m...ster_lathe.asp

yes where i buy some of my second machines a guy down here in Melbourne Victoria has one of those lathes they assemble in the hull of a ship and do there boring hole for the prop setup , its a long sucker again over 40ft long

cheers