There are many reasons that we chose to make our part, shaft 1, on the lathe. Shafts are round, and lathes produce round parts, therefore it seems only natural to create our part on a lathe. Creating the shaft, which is primarily a cylindrical shape, would be incredibly tedious and time consuming on a mill or any other type of machine that does not spin. Since it would be the least time-consuming process to create our part, we chose the lathe.
It would not be difficult to code the shape of our shaft into the CNC computers since the shape of our part is not too complicated.
There is a wide variety of materials that we can choose from to create the shaft. Our group has decided to make the part out of aluminum for several reasons. We decided to use metal because it is sturdy and strong and chose aluminum because the cost is much cheaper than that of other metals.
It is very fast and easy to create a part using
a lathe. A skilled machinist can probably create the shaft in less than an hour.
Also, since our group is not relying on a company over the internet to create
our part, we do not have to wait a long time for them to make it and send it
back to us. The lathe that we will be using is easily accessible, it is located
in Hammerschlag Hall.