Swiss-style lathe / Swiss turning center

A view inside the enclosure of a CNC Swiss-style lathe/screw machine

A Swiss-style lathe is a specific design of lathe providing extreme accuracy (sometimes holding tolerances as small as a few tenths of a thousandth of an inch—a few 

micrometers). A Swiss-style lathe holds the workpiece with both a collet and a guide bushing. The collet sits behind the guide bushing, and the tools sit in front of 

the guide bushing, holding stationary on the Z axis. To cut lengthwise along the part, the tools will move in and the material itself will move back and forth along 

the Z axis. This allows all the work to be done on the material near the guide bushing where it is more rigid, making them ideal for working on slender workpieces as 

the part is held firmly with little chance of deflection or vibration occurring. This style of lathe is commonly used under CNC control.

Most CNC Swiss-style lathes today use one or two main spindles plus one or two back spindles (secondary spindles). The main spindle is used with the guide bushing for

 the main machining operations. The secondary spindle is located behind the part, aligned on the Z axis. In simple operation it picks up the part as it is cut off, 

and accepts it for second operations, then ejects it into a bin, eliminating the need to have an operator manually change each part, as is often the case with 

standard CNC turning centers. This makes them very efficient, as these machines are capable of fast cycle times, producing simple parts in one cycle 

(i.e., no need for a second machine to finish the part with second operations), in as little as 10–15 seconds. This makes them ideal for large production runs of 

small-diameter parts.

Additionally, as many Swiss lathes incorporate a secondary spindle, or 'sub-spindle', they also incorporate 'live tooling'. Live tools are rotary cutting tools 

that are powered by a small motor independently of the spindle motor(s). Live tools increase the intricacy of components that can be manufactured by the Swiss lathe.

 For instance, automatically producing a part with a hole drilled perpendicular to the main axis (the axis of rotation of the spindles) is very economical

 with live tooling, and similarly uneconomical if done as a secondary operation after machining by the Swiss lathe is complete. A 'secondary operation' is a machining 

operation requiring a partially completed part to be secured in a second machine to complete the manufacturing process. Generally, advanced CAD/CAM software uses

 live tools in addition to the main spindles so that most parts that can be drawn by a CAD system can actually be manufactured by the machines that 

the CAD/CAM software support.