stress relieved lathe?

[Frank Fusco]

Had dinner with a friend last night. He said he wants to buy a Oneway lathe because the steel in them is stress relieved. I said, "that's nice." but I don't have a clue what he was talking about.
I use my lathe to relieve stress in ME. Could it be that Oneway's are Canadian and are embarrased about it? :rolleyes:

[Doug Thompson]

This is a process where the steel is heated and allowed to cool slowly to prevent any movement over a long period of time. Sorta like kiln drying wood. Oneway does make the best quality lathe and this is one reason.

edit - I should add the bed is a weldment... steel tube, steel ways, steel supports all welded together. Welding creates stresses in the metal that needs to be removed before the ways are machined.

Most of us have a one piece cast iron beds that don't need to be relieved.

[Hank Walczak]

I thought this was a more important characteristic of machines with tables and large flat services ( saws, jointers, etc.). relieving keeps it flat. Lots of hits on the subject if you google "stress relieved steel or iron". Not sure if that makes a whole lot of difference on a lathe.

Hank

[Andy Hoyt]

Just grabbed this off Oneway's site.
Bedways and ribs are welded to a 10-3/4 inch diameter x 5/16 inch wall tube. The assembly is stress relieved and precision machined.
Almost perfect torsional rigidity is achieved - many times more so than twin tube or cast iron bed designs.I do not know what torsional rigidity is, but it sounds impressive.

Perhaps it speaks to resistance of the lathe body wanting to twist while being subjected to the same forces that cause it to want to dance across the floor. Thusly keeping head and tail stocks in alignment?

[David Foshee]

Andy I think you are correct Tortional rigdity is the resitance to twisting

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

I agree with Frank, the most important stress relief my lathe has is for me :D

With any welded steel, or, even more importantly aluminium, once the item is welded, it should be stress relived. This is very important on things like airframes, motorcycle frames, precision tooling etc, not so much on beer racks :rolleyes:

I'm not surprised the Oneway does this, for the price of admission, I'd expect nothing less :cool:

Cheers!