PRECISION HIGH SPEED TURNING MACHINE

摘要

A precision high speed turning machine apparatus (10) is provided which performs a selected operation, such as shaping, polishing or probing/measuring on a workpiece (12) and in particular on a rotationally non-symmetric workpiece. The workpiece (12) is mounted to a workpiece mount (16) which rotates the workpiece (12) at a controlled rate, and a tool (26) is provided which is adapted to perform the selected opeation. The tool (26) is supported on a tool mount (28) which positions the tool adjacent a portion of a workpiece surface to be operated on. The tool mount is designed to have very low inertia which permits relatively large movements, of the tool (26) generally perpendicular to the workpiece (12), at high enough acceleration so as to permit high speed rotation of the workpiece (12). For some embodiments, more than one tool is mounted to the arm (28) so as to permit a plurality of different operations to be performed.