【正文】 two to four levers. An increasing trend is to provide a continuously variable speed range through electrical or mechanical drives. Because the accuracy of a lathe is greatly dependent on the spindle, it is of heavy construction and mounted in heavy bearings, usually preloaded tapered roller or ball types. The spindle has a hole extending through its length, through which long bar stock can be fed. The size of maximum size of bar stock that can be machined when the material must be fed through spindle. The tailsticd assembly consists, essentially, of three parts. A lower casting fits on the inner ways of the bed and can slide longitudinally thereon, with a means for clamping the entire assembly in any desired location, An upper casting fits on the lower one and can be moved transversely upon it, on some type of keyed ways, to permit aligning the assembly is the tailstock quill. This is a hollow steel cylinder, usually about 51 to 76mm(2to 3 inches) in diameter, that can be moved several inches longitudinally in and out of the upper casting by means of a hand wheel and screw. The size of a lathe is designated by two dimensions. The first is known as the swing. This is the maximum diameter of work that can be rotated on a lathe. It is approximately twice the distance between the line connecting the lathe centers and the nearest point on the ways, The second size dimension is the maximum distance between centers. The swing thus indicates the maximum work piece diameter that can be turned in the lathe, while the distance between centers indicates the maximum length of work piece that can be mounted between centers. Engine lathes are the type most frequently used in manufacturing. They are heavyduty machine tools with all the ponents described previously and have power drive for all tool movements except on the pound rest. They monly range in size from 305 to 610 mm(12 to 24 inches)swing and from 610 to 1219 mm(24 to 48 inches) center distances, but swings up to 1270 mm(50 inches) and center distances up to 3658mm(12 feet) are not unmon. Most have chip pans and a builtin coolant circulating system. Smaller engine latheswith swings usually not over 330 mm (13 inches ) –also are available in bench type, designed for the bed to be mounted on a bench on a bench or cabi. Although engine lathes are versatile and very useful, because of the time required for changing and setting tools and for making measurements on the work piece, thy are not suitable for quantity production. Often the actual chipproduction tine is less than 30% of the total cycle time. In addition, a skilled machinist is required for all the operations, and such persons are costly and often in short supply. However, much of the operator’s time is consumed by simple, repetitious adjustments and in watching chips being made. Consequently, to reduce or eliminate the amount of skilled labor that is required, turret lathes, screw machines, and other types of semiautomatic and automatic lathes have been highly developed and are widely used in manufacturing. 2 Numerical Control One of the most fundamental concepts in the area of advanced manufacturing technologies is numerical control (NC). Prior to the advent of NC, all machine tools ere manually operated and controlled. Among the many limitations associated with manual control machine tools, perhaps none is more prominent than the limitation of operator skills. With manual control, the quality of the product is directly related to and limited to the skills of the operator. Numerical control represents the first major step away from human control of