Holy cow..
The size of that is the first shock. but the most astonishing fact lies within the details...
"MTR combined two WWII lathes to produce a lathe with a nearly 100' bed, capable of turning ship shafts with a
spindle runout of only 0.0002" TIR."
Holy cow.. is that a mistake??? If not, that is awesomely impressive for a machine that large.
Basically what that means is that the diameter of the shaft that is made is within 0.0002" of it's desired size.
In manufacturing, there are tolerances on parts, so that a circle drawn in CAD with a diameter of 10" and a tolerance of plus or minus 1" can be from 11" to 9" and still be acceptable.
Looking at the size of that machine, I can only guess that a part that is drawn and spec'd out to be 20" in diameter can maintain a diameter of 20.0002" - 19.0008".
That's almost unheard of. The standard tolerance to all the parts I have drawn in CAD so far has been from .002" to .005" which is still small, but it's like a width of a thumb as opposed to a human hair almost.. lol (That's kind of an extreme analogy, but it's true.
That is more impressive to me than the size of the machine for sure.
edit: Jay beat me to the statement, and it looks like he is also impressed.
