Thermal growth affects part accuracy and repeatability way more than we realized.

If you have tooling, workholding, and toolpaths dialed in but are still having trouble with accuracy and repeatability, it may be related to thermal growth. Let’s talk about the importance of thermal stability, how slight, sudden changes in machine shop environment can blow tolerances, and how to use NC programs and variables to keep the lathe at the right temperature before parts are made!

gcode Snippet

This code snippet is what we use on our ST-20Y to check spindle temperature before running: