Before, it is important to be completely skilled before you could successfully use a wood lathe. But with the development of technology and better design programs, you could create beautiful furniture designs and program it in the controller and the CNC wood lathe. A great feature of a CNC wood lathe would be dust collector. You can then bump the part against the tool, press the cycle start button, and the tool/stop moves out of the way. Freebies These days, woodworking software freebies are all over. They include calculators for computing board feet, wood movements, wood selection, moisture content, drawer sizing, shelf sag rates, cost estimates, and many others downloadable for free. Operators are less at risk because human interaction is decreased. Many applications of CNC machining have the machines operating unmanned for significant periods of time. The software automatically stops operations and asks for human help only in cases of errors and other problems. Benefits The most obvious of all the benefits is cost savings. With the innovation, all the other areas of woodworking (lathe, machine, drill, route, etc.) are now done via computer directions and assistance. Production of varieties of metal and wooden parts is now easier because of the speed and versatility of these modern lathes. Lathes Lathes are those woodworking machines that shape materials and create such items as posts, ornate designs on wood, and many others. There might be tool changes, or placement of new raw material and such, but everything is done by the CNC machine. On average, these machines have stronger engines than the manual ones. They are also more rigid, a quality that makes for more accurate cuts and drills (precision is as close as 0.0001 of an inch). Benefits With the advent of CNC machines servicing in the woodworking industry, there had been a considerable drop in the number of human errors that used to pepper manual machining. Moreover, the end products from CNC-controlled machinery have been exact duplicates to one another. Parts are made the same way every time.