For example, just saw a video of a lathe machining a chess piece. The final product was much smaller than the starting piece. Why do you start with such large pieces of stock for small projects? Wouldn’t it be smarter and more efficient to rough cut using cnc or water jet then finish?
In: Engineering
The other answers given have been good, but also this might be a bit of a false premise. There’s no general need to start with a huge stock excess. I work in CNC machining, but we start from metal castings that are already roughly the right shape. The difference is those castings are very expensive for a complex end result (jet engine parts) compared to starting from a block of material for a simpler shape. It’s about the balance of machine capability, cost, and need for efficiency.
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