This has been an ongoing issue of arguments at my work and there are arguments for both sides of the coin. Which is the best way of turning on a CNC lathe? Right-handed tooling facing down, or left-handed tooling facing up?
We use RH tooling, and with a couple of our lathes taking heavy cuts the concern is that this setup isn't the most rigid due to the forces from the cut pulling up on the turret. The argument to that though is chip control is poor.
The problem that I see with RH tooling is that it's not rigid and that it directs chips into the window (I've replaced my window up to 4 times in a single year) where LH directs them to the back/base of the machine and directs the forces towards the base.
Any thoughts?