What is Shaping and Planing?

Shaping Machine:

The work is control stationary and the tool on the ram is affected back and forth across the work.

Used for shaping a lot of smaller jobs.

it's a light-weight machine.

will use light-weight cuts and finer feed.

Uses one cutting implement at a time.

Driven mistreatment quick- come back link mechanism.

it's less rigid and fewer strong.

Planing Machine:

The tool is stationary and therefore the piece of work on the table travels back and forth underneath the tool.

Meant for a lot of larger jobs. Jobs as giant as vi meter wide and doubly as long are often machined.

it's an important duty machine.

will use heavier cuts and coarse feed.

many tools will cut at the same time.

The drive on the plane table is either by gears or by hydraulic means that.

higher rigidity that provide additional accuracy on machined surfaces.

Shaping and Planing Machine

Machining is essentially one material removal process where excess material is sheared off by the mutual interaction between workpiece and cutter . There exist several machining processes to cater the necessity of processing a good sort of workpiece materials in innumerable ways. For examples, lathe operations (such as straight turning, taper turning, internal turning, threading, grooving, etc.) are primarily administered to get cylindrical or conical surfaces. Milling operations are administered primarily for generating flat surfaces. almost like the lathe and milling operations, shaping and planing are two machining processes which will generate flat surfaces at different planes or orientations. However, the rotation of workpiece or cutter imparts necessary cutting velocity the lathe operations and milling processes. On the contrary, both shaping and planing processes utilize only reciprocating motion to supply three necessary process parameters (cutting velocity, feed motion, and depth of cut).

Since reciprocating motion is employed to impart cutting velocity both in shaping and planing, so either the cutter or the workpiece is required to reciprocate. Here, only forward stroke is employed for removing material, while the backward stroke is kept idle. So cutter engages with the workpiece only in forward stroke. Since backward stroke doesn't involve in cutting, therefore the time of this redundant stroke are often reduced while giving longer for forward stroke. Quick-return mechanism is usually employed to for this purpose. Although both shaping and planing utilize quick-return mechanism, their main difference lies on the purpose of application of cutting velocity. In shaping, the reciprocating movement of the tool provides cutting velocity; while in planing reciprocating movement of labor table (workpiece) provides intended cutting velocity. Accordingly, quick-return mechanism is integrated with the cutter for shaping operation and with the worktable in planing operation. Although there are many similarities among shaping and planing, they're different in many aspects, as discussed below.

Similarities between shaping and planing

Both shaping and planing are conventional machining operations that follow subtractive manufacturing approach (layer-by-layer removal of fabric from a solid blank).

Both utilizes general purpose machine tools (shaping machining and planing machine).

None of them utilize any rotational motion (as just in case of turning, milling or drilling). Only reciprocating motion is employed to impart required cutting velocity, feed and depth of cut.

Areas of application of both the processes also are similar. This includes making straight slots, grooves, pockets, T-slots, V-blocks, etc.

None of them can produce any curved slots (like circular or parabolic slot).

In both the cases, excess material is faraway from the workpiece within the sort of chips (this is unlike non-traditional machining processes where material are often removed in various forms including ions, atoms, vapor, solid debris, etc.).

Both utilize single point cutter (shaping tool and planing tool have just one active leading edge that participates in material removal action at a time).


Quick return mechanism is used in both the machine tools; however, their point of application are different.