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CLK gets new lathe

Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Christopher Davidson, CLK superintendent, discusses the donation of the new high-tech piece of equipment to the high school’s industrial arts program at Tuesday’s regular monthly CLK School Board meeting.

CALUMET TOWNSHIP — The Calumet High School has received the donation of a new dual process CNC Lathe for the industrial arts program. The lathe was donated by Doug Jurmu from Royale, Inc., and is a great benefit to the program, said Christopher Davidson, CLK superintendent.

“It has the option where our students can operate it both manually, or they can take their CAD designs, upload their G Codes into the lathe, and it can operate based on the specs of that design,” Davidson said. “They can import their designs right into the machine.”

The dual process Computer numerical control (CNC) lathe utilizes modern versions of carbide tooling and processing. A part can be designed for customization, and the machine’s tool paths can be programmed using the CAD or CAM processes.

The operator can also manually design a part or tool path as well.

The resulting coded computer file is then uploaded to the CNC machine, and the machine will then automatically produce the desired parts for which it was programmed to design.

According to CNC.com, a CNC lathe is controlled by a menu-type interface on a computer. The operator who manages the process can actually see a visual simulation of how the machine will function during the production phase.

Thanks to this technology, the machine operator generally does not need to know as much about the specifics of the machine he or she oversees compared to what machine operators must know about more traditional lathes that require some manual labor.

Getting the lathe to the school was a team effort, according to Davidson. Ron Hyrkas and Jeff Kalcich, and the village of Laurium, assisted with transporting the machine, as well as unloading it.

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