Drilling

We haven’t mentioned this yet, but a lathe is also capable of drilling. When drilling with a lathe, the drill bit doesn’t spin; it simply moves against the stock, and it is the part that is spinning.

There is one limitation, though: since we use the chuck rotation to remove material, the hole axis must be coincident with the rotation axis. There is no workaround to this limitation; it is the way drilling works with a typical lathe. If our part features multiple holes, we may need to use a milling operation after processing the stock on our lathe.

Another option would be a multi-spindle machine that can perform both milling and turning operations.

In the following pages, we are about to find out how to set up a simple drilling operation. Please note that there is not a dedicated drilling command for turning; the same command can be used when setting up both turning and milling operations. This is the reason why we will encounter few options inside the...