Swiss-Type Lathes

A Swiss-type lathe, or sliding-headstock lathe, feeds the bar through a guide bushing and cuts right next to that support. The headstock moves the bar in Z while the tools stay close to the bushing, so even a long, thin part does not deflect under the cut. That is why these machines make bone screws, connector pins, watch parts and small shafts whose length is many times their diameter.

The machines are small in diameter and busy in tooling. A typical one carries a gang of turning tools, driven tools for cross and end working, and a sub-spindle with its own back-working tools, so the part drops off complete. Some can run without the guide bushing for shorter parts, which leaves a shorter bar remnant. For chucked parts and larger diameters, a conventional CNC lathe is the better fit, and for very high volumes of simpler parts there are multi-spindle automatics.

The first figure to compare is the maximum bar or machining diameter, then the length that can be machined in one chucking. Count the axes and the tool positions, and check how many of them are driven and how many serve the sub-spindle. Main and sub-spindle speeds matter at small diameters. Look at whether the guide bushing can be removed, and at the footprint: these machines are often bought in rows.