How it’s made :- Lathe Beds

Manufacturing of different parts in industries take very productive nowadays.

Lathe bed is one of the essential part and engineering miracle for at least mechanical and production industries.

Manufacturing process of Lathe Beds is very critical according to its application.

How it’s made?

Lathe bed is made of high-grade cast iron having approx tensile strength of 30 kgf/mm² & with hardness of BHN 201.

We can say, bed is cast and usual process of pattern making and molding etc.

Very 1st step after casting process, the bed is shot blasted or mostly sand blasted and then most probably fettled.

Then, preliminary marking in which the reference surface are marked.

The technical purpose,

1) This helps to ascertain whether the shape and size of the casting confirm to the design so that it can be taken up for subsequent machining.

2) marking will obviously help to set up the workpiece and m/c faster.

Moreover, rough m/cing is normally done on planing machine & plano Miller with single set-up.

Generally, allowance of 2 to 3 mm is left for finish machining process but according to or depending on manufacturer.

Now, Rough machined bed is then subjected to artificial ageing.

Important point is, again followed by shot or sand blasting to remove a very fine scales, which appears after ageing.

So, bed is then primed, and given a primary coating of point.

Finish processing as machining is after all done on high accuracy planning machine mostly or sometime on advance machine like CNC and all.

Also, required by marking & drilling the holes required for headstock etc, all know about the headstock right?

Then, the bed is heat treated by the flame or induction hardening which imparts hardness of 41-45 HRC, here HRC means hardness measured on Rockwell scale.

Now, finishing part is going to begin.

Finish painting is done after that.

Final, remaining & most imp. Operation of grinding the guideways then follows.

Here, hardness of the lathe bed is critical as quality matters and dimensions of bed according to requirement and also surface finish are given as second most priority.

So, this is all about manufacturing of Lathe Beds, it maybe vary according to requirements and depends on manufacturer too.