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bar feeder

A bar feeder is a stacking and feeding mechanism that attaches to a CNC lathe. It feeds a long piece of round bar stock into the lathe through a hollow spindle. The chuck or collet clamps down on it when the length of stock feeds to the correct distance (or against a stop) and when the lathe spindle is turned on the entire length of bar spins... even in the bar feeder. The part is machined and then parted off to fall into a collector. An M-code in the CNC program feeds a new length of stock into the chuck or collet and the whole procedure begins again. When the last piece of bar is fed into the spindle a new piece of bar is loaded from the magazine into the feeder.

The code word for bar feeding is usually M06.