Ornamental turning is a type of turning, a craft that involves cutting of a work mounted in a lathe. The work can be made of any material that is suitable for being cut in this way, such as wood, bone, ivory or metal. Plain turning is work executed on a lathe where a transverse section through any part of the work comprises a plain circle. Ornamental turning, also called Complex turning, is executed on a lathe with attachments which convert that plain circular section to variants of outline; these range from a simple series of cuts taken at intervals around the work (so producing grooves or bumps on the surface) to non-circular movements whereby the whole of the circular shape is removed to give a completely different form. Such shapes are achieved by various means, the principal ones being:
Ornamental turning is believed to have originated in Bavaria in the latter part of the 15th century when it consisted mostly of rose-work, being done by using a cam or template (called a rosette) mounted on the lathe spindle and allowing the headstock to rock under tension of a spring or weight, to follow the contour on the edge of the rosette: also the spindle was allowed to slide to and fro endwise under tension of another spring, or weight, to follow the contour on the face of the rosette. Thus, as the work was rotated it rocked and traversed so that the cutting tool produced wavy lines upon the surface or the cylinder. Before the end of the 18th century, cutting tools were generally hand-held or clamped to a fixed 'rest'. The slide rest, which allows the cutter to slide along the rest under control of a leadscrew, although invented before 1480, was not in general use until much later. It is clear from surviving examples of their work that the skill of the early turners was highly developed.
In response to growing interest by wealthy and great patrons, including several of the royal families of Europe, two great works on the art and science of turning were published in France:. [1] Meanwhile, turning technology was being developed in England where the practice of arresting the work from point to point (by a division plate) and applying a revolving cutter (held in an improved slide rest) was employed. By the beginning of the 19th century John Jacob Holtzapffel had established his workshop in London and built a reputation as a maker of high-class lathes and tools. Many of his customers were among the monarchs and nobility of Europe and England became the world centre for the pastime of ornamental turning. The Holtzapffel firm continued to make lathes until 1927 by which time they had produced a total of 2557, serially numbered, many of which were equipped for ornamental turning. Other engineers copied or varied his designs but none were so prolific in their manufacture.
The hobby of ornamental turning declined rapidly following the invention of the motor-car which, by the end of the First World War, had become the fashionable pastime of the mechanically minded amateur, and the lathes with their complex equipment were abandoned. Relatively few of these mechanical marvels survive today and hardly any are complete with all their original accessories. However, the hobby is still kept alive by a small band of enthusiasts, notably the Society of Ornamental Turners, founded in 1948 and based in England but with members world-wide; new groups have since been established, principally in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The members of all these societies seek to develop the knowledge of ornamental turning and to restore, maintain and use the old equipment or, to adapt modern lathes for ornamental turning. Some are even bringing the hobby right up-to-date by building computer-controlled O.T. lathes.
The accepted definitive published work on ornamental turning is the book Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, by Charles and John Jacob Holtzapffel. [2] Volume 5, entitled “The Principles and Practice of Ornamental or Complex Turning” is considered to be the bible of ornamental turning but there is much related information in the other volumes. Other useful books include: Ornamental Turning, by J.H.Evans, [3] The Lathe & Its Uses, by J Lukin [4] Ornamental Turning, by T D Walshaw, [5] and Holtzapffel Volume VI by John F.Edwards, 2013. [6] Reprints of all these books are usually obtainable.
The Society of Ornamental Turners was founded in 1948 with the object to encourage, develop and promote the study and practice of the art and science of ornamental turning. Its members meet quarterly in London to display examples of their work, share their experiences and attend a lecture or demonstration. Seminars and outings to places of interest are also arranged. A bulletin containing articles on all aspects of ornamental turning and news of the society is published half-yearly in March and September and a newsletter in July and December. The society maintains a website: The Society of Ornamental Turners which contains much information about this pastime together with a gallery of pictures of ornamentally turned objects. Competitions are held annually for ornamental turning, plain turning, making equipment, displays at meetings, contributions to the bulletin and for advancing the knowledge of the art.
Over many years a close association has been formed between the Society and the Worshipful Company of Turners of London and several members of the Society are Freemen or Liverymen of the Worshipful Company. From time to time the Worshipful Company holds competitions which include categories open specifically to members of the Society. [7] [8] [9]
A cam is a rotating or sliding piece in a mechanical linkage used especially in transforming rotary motion into linear motion. It is often a part of a rotating wheel or shaft that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path. The cam can be a simple tooth, as is used to deliver pulses of power to a steam hammer, for example, or an eccentric disc or other shape that produces a smooth reciprocating motion in the follower, which is a lever making contact with the cam. A cam timer is similar, and were widely used for electric machine control before the advent of inexpensive electronics, microcontrollers, integrated circuits, programmable logic controllers and digital control.
A lathe is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, and turning, with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object with symmetry about that axis.
Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale: from huge ships, buildings, and bridges down to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry.
A machinist is a tradesperson or trained professional who not only operates machine tools, but also has the knowledge of tooling and materials required to create set ups on machine tools such as milling machines, grinders, lathes, and drilling machines.
Woodturning is the craft of using a wood lathe with hand-held tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Like the potter's wheel, the wood lathe is a simple mechanism that can generate a variety of forms. The operator is known as a turner, and the skills needed to use the tools were traditionally known as turnery. In pre-industrial England, these skills were sufficiently difficult to be known as 'the misterie' of the turners guild. The skills to use the tools by hand, without a fixed point of contact with the wood, distinguish woodturning and the wood lathe from the machinist's lathe, or metal-working lathe.
A mandrel, mandril, or arbor is a gently tapered cylinder against which material can be forged or shaped, or a flanged or tapered or threaded bar that grips a workpiece to be machined in a lathe. A flanged mandrel is a parallel bar of a specific diameter with an integral flange towards one end, and threaded at the opposite end. Work is gripped between the flange and a nut on the thread. A tapered mandrel has a taper of approximately 0.005 inches per foot and is designed to hold work by being driven into an accurate hole on the work, gripping the work by friction. A threaded mandrel may have a male or female thread, and work which has an identical thread is screwed onto the mandrel.
The phrase speeds and feeds or feeds and speeds refers to two separate velocities in machine tool practice, cutting speed and feed rate. They are often considered as a pair because of their combined effect on the cutting process. Each, however, can also be considered and analyzed in its own right.
A tool bit is a non-rotary cutting tool used in metal lathes, shapers, and planers. Such cutters are also often referred to by the set-phrase name of single-point cutting tool, as distinguished from other cutting tools such as a saw or water jet cutter. The cutting edge is ground to suit a particular machining operation and may be resharpened or reshaped as needed. The ground tool bit is held rigidly by a tool holder while it is cutting.
Turning is a machining process in which a cutting tool, typically a non-rotary tool bit, describes a helix toolpath by moving more or less linearly while the workpiece rotates.
A lathe center, often shortened to center, is a tool that has been ground to a point to accurately position a workpiece on an axis. They usually have an included angle of 60°, but in heavy machining situations an angle of 75° is used.
A metal lathe or metalworking lathe is a large class of lathes designed for precisely machining relatively hard materials. They were originally designed to machine metals; however, with the advent of plastics and other materials, and with their inherent versatility, they are used in a wide range of applications, and a broad range of materials. In machining jargon, where the larger context is already understood, they are usually simply called lathes, or else referred to by more-specific subtype names. These rigid machine tools remove material from a rotating workpiece via the movements of various cutting tools, such as tool bits and drill bits.
A rose engine lathe is a specialized kind of geometric lathe. The head stock rocks back and forth with a rocking motion and/or slides along the spindle axis in a pumping motion. A rosette or cam-like pattern mounted on the spindle is controlled by moving against a cam follower(s) while the lathe spindle rotates. Rose engine work can make flower patterns, as well as convoluted, symmetrical, multi-lobed geometric patterns. The patterns it produces are similar to that of a Spirograph, in metal. No other ornamental lathe can produce these "rose" patterns. The decoration produced by a rose engine lathe is called guilloche. It sometimes confused with "jewel finishes" or engine turning, a much cheaper process of making swirly marks in metal by a rotating abrasive peg or pad, which is repeatedly applied to the surface to make a pattern of overlapping circles. Jewel finishes used to be common on stereo faceplates and automobile interiors.
Surface feet per minute is the combination of a physical quantity and an imperial and American customary unit. It is defined as the number of linear feet that a location on a rotating component travels in one minute. Its most common use is in the measurement of cutting speed in machining. It is a unit of velocity that describes how fast the cutting edge of the cutting tool travels. It correlates directly to the machinability of the workpiece material and the hardness of the cutting tool material. It relates to spindle speed via variables such as cutter diameter or workpiece diameter.
Nicolas Grollier de Servière (1596–1689) was a French inventor and ornamental turner who became well known for creating a series of fantastic machines.
A screw-cutting lathe is a machine capable of cutting very accurate screw threads via single-point screw-cutting, which is the process of guiding the linear motion of the tool bit in a precisely known ratio to the rotating motion of the workpiece. This is accomplished by gearing the leadscrew to the spindle with a certain gear ratio for each thread pitch. Every degree of spindle rotation is matched by a certain distance of linear tool travel, depending on the desired thread pitch.
The Holtzapffel dynasty of tool and lathe makers was founded in Long Acre, London by a Strasbourg-born turner, Jean-Jacques Holtzapffel, in 1794. The firm specialized in lathes for ornamental turning but also made a name for its high-quality edge and boring tools.
The American Association of Woodturners (AAW) is the principal organization in the United States supporting the art and craft of woodturning. It is sometimes stylized as American Association of Wood Turners (AAW). Established in 1986 and headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the organization encompasses more than 15,000 members in the United States and many foreign nations. As of 2013, the AAW was affiliated with nearly 350 local chapters worldwide. In addition to sponsoring an annual national symposium, the AAW provides support to local clubs for outreach and education. The 25th anniversary of the AAW was celebrated in 2011 at the annual symposium held in Saint Paul. Phil McDonald is executive director of the organization.
In manufacturing, threading is the process of creating a screw thread. More screw threads are produced each year than any other machine element. There are many methods of generating threads, including subtractive methods ; deformative or transformative methods ; additive methods ; or combinations thereof.
Andrey Konstantinovich Nartov (1683—1756) was a Russian scientist, military engineer, inventor and sculptor. He was a personal craftsman of Peter I of Russia, and later a member of the Russian Academy of Science.
Charles Holtzapffel was a mechanical engineer and technical writer and one of the Holtzapffel dynasty of tool and lathe makers. He wrote a five volume treatise called Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, which is considered a blueprint for ornamental turning, with over 3000 pages and 1600 illustrations.