【正文】 ing than any other machine tool. The essential ponents of a lathe are the bed, headstock assembly, tailstock assembly, and the leads crew and feed rod. The headstock is mounted in a foxed position on the inner ways, usually at the left end of the bed. It provides a powered means of rotating the word at various speeds . Essentially, it consists of a hollow spindle, mounted in accurate bearings, and a set of transmission gearssimilar to a truck transmission— through which the spindle can be rotated at a number of speeds. Most lathes provide from 8 to 18 speeds, usually in a geometric ratio, and on modern lathes all the speeds can be obtained merely by moving from 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. This problem led to the development in 1959 of the Automatically Programmed Tools (APT) language for NC that uses statements similar to English language to define the part geometry, describe the cutting tool configuration, and specify the necessary motions. The development of the APT language was a major step forward in the further development of NC technology. The original NC system were vastly different from those used punched paper , which was later to replaced by magic plastic tape .A tape reader was used to interpret the instructions written on the tape for the machine .Together, all /f this represented giant step forward in the control of machine tools . However ,there were a number of problems with NC at this point in its development. The development of a concept known as numerical control (DNC) solve the paper and plastic tape problems associated with numerical control by simply eliminating tape as the medium for carrying the programmed instructions . In direct numerical control, machine tools are tied, via 第 頁 共 12 頁 a data transmission link, to a host puter and fed to the machine tool as needed via the data transmission linkage. Direct numerical control represented a major step forward over punched tape and plastic tape. However ,it is subject to the same limitation as all technologies that depend on a host puter. When the host puter goes down , the machine tools also experience down time . This problem led to the development of puter numerical control. The development of the microprocessor allowed for the development of programmable logic controllers (PLC) and microputers . These two technologies allowed for the development of puter numerical control (CNC).With CNC , each machine tool has a PLC or a microputer that serves the same purpose. This allows programs to be input and stored at each individual machine tool. CNC solved the problems associated downtime of the host puter , but it introduced another problem known as data management . The same program might be loaded on ten different microputers with no munication among them. This problem is in the process of being solved by local area works that connectDigital Signal Processors The most important of these was that it was difficult or impossible to change the instructions entered on the tape. To made even the most minor adjustments in a program of instructions, it was necessary to interrupt machining operations and make a new tape. It was also still necessary to run the tape through the reader as many times as there were parts to be produced. Fortunately, puter technology became a reality and soon solved the problems of NC associated with punched paper and plastic tape. The development of a concept known as direct numerical control (DNC) solved the paper and plastic tape problems associated with numerical control by simply eliminating tape as the medium for carrying the programmed instructions. In direct numerical control, machine tools are tied, via a data transmission link, to a host puter. Programs for operating the machine tools are stored in the host puter and fed to the machine tool an needed via the data transmission linkage. Direct numerical control represented a major step forward over punched tape and plastic tape. However, it is subject to the same limitations as all technologies that depend on a host puter. When t