Micro Machining tool: the most important micro machining tool is lathe.
Eredi Baitelli is a certified micro machining company offering high quality service in high precision metal turning and micro turning for small parts machining.
Eredi Baitelli is an international micro machining company with a strong presence in Europe and a growing one in emerging markets, offering personalized and flexible metal turning services.
Eredi Baitelli uses high precision turning technology to produce metal turned pieces, made with different metallic materials and in different application fields.
A lathe is a micro machining tool used principally for shaping pieces of metal, wood, or other materials by causing the workpiece to be held and rotated by the lathe while a tool bit is advanced into the work causing the cutting.
The various angles, shapes, and sizes of a single-point cutting tool have direct relation to the resulting surface of a workpiece in micro machining operations. Different types of angle such as rake angle, side rake angle, cutting-edge angle, relief angle, nose radius exist and may be different with respect to the workpiece. Also, there are many shapes of single-point cutting tools, such as V-shaped and Square. Usually, a special toolholder is used to hold the cutting tool firmly during operation.

The lathe is an ancient tool, dating at least to ancient Egypt and known and used in Assyria and ancient Greece. The origin of turning dates to around 1300 BC when the Ancient Egyptians first developed a two-person lathe. Ancient Rome improved the Egyptian design with the addition of a turning bow. In the Middle Ages a pedal replaced hand-operated turning, freeing both the craftsman’s hands to hold the woodturning tools. The pedal was usually connected to a pole, often a straight-grained sapling. The system today is called the “spring pole” lathe. Spring pole lathes were in common use into the early 20th century. One of the first lathes in the UK was the Horizontal Boring Machine that was installed by Jan Verbruggen in 1772 in the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. It was horse-powered and allowed for the production of much more accurate and stronger cannon used with success in the American Revolutionary War late 18th century. One of the key characteristics of this Boring Machine was that the object was turning as opposed to the tool making it technically a lathe. (see attached drawing). Henry Maudslay who later developed many improvements to the lathe worked at the Royal Arsenal from 1783 being exposed to this machine in the Verbruggen workshop. During the Industrial Revolution, mechanized power generated by water wheels or steam engines was transmitted to the lathe via line shafting, allowing faster and easier work. Metalworking lathes evolved into heavier machines with thicker, more rigid parts. Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, individual electric motors at each lathe replaced line shafting as the power source. Beginning in the 1950s, servomechanism were applied to the control of lathes and other machine tools via numerical control, which often was coupled with computers to yield computerized numerical control. Today manually controlled and CNC lathes coexist in the manufacturing industries and realises micro machining parts.

Several reason of having micro machining tool
There has been a nebulously defined concept that tooling machines has to be large enough to perform amicro machining, which has prevented the development of small tooling machines. However, the recent advances in high-precision processing technology made micro machines tooling feasible. There are several reasons of having micro machining tooling:

• Micro machining tools save a large amount of energy. The use of over-sized machines for small parts results an over consumption of energy that have been ignored; however, the market today requires further efficient ways of manufacturing. Lower energy consumption will be obtained by utilizing smaller machines with the parts’ size becomes smaller. Suppose a conventional tooling machine consumes 10 kW of electricity, a micro machine powered 100W is more efficient by 100 times.
• Micro machining tools save the cost for peripheral equipment such as temperature control or vibration isolation. In order to perform a micro machining, the temperature of a machine has to be maintained constant; that is, an entire room temperature is to be controlled for the machine. For a micro machining, on the other hand, such temperature-controlled room is not necessary; rather, a small chamber is enough to control its temperature. Vibration isolation is also an important factor to make a precisionmicro machining. A large machine needs a vibration-free machine bed or even special building to isolate internal/external vibrations. A micro machine may not need to have such system because it difficult to be affected by disturbance: micro machining tools have higher natural frequency than the frequencies of vibrations caused by machining or surroundings.
• Micro machining tools will let manufacturers have more flexible factory layout, and they can easily be rearranged their layout in response to the changing market. Because a micro machine does not need a high -powered electric source, special room or building, they can be installed in any place or can be moved anywhere with low cost.