CNC Lathes

[MichaelBick]

We don't have any experience doing any serious machining(lathe + mill) except for one of our mentors. That said, a cnc would not be a substitute for manual equipment. Both manual lathes and mills are tools that are the top of of my list regardless. The only things that I can think of off the top of my head that would need a CNC lathe is a shifting block like the ones 254 uses and WCD output shafts if we got live tooling with the lathe. I would also assume that it would speed up the operations that you can do on a manual lathe, though I don't know because we've never done CAM and setup for a CNC part. The above considered, I would want to know if the cnc lathe has sped up the machining process for your team considerably, because if it has I would want to include it in my proposal.