Swarf vs. Turning — What's the Difference?

Swarf, also known as chips or by other process-specific names (such as turnings, filings, or shavings), are pieces of metal, wood, or plastic that are the debris or waste resulting from machining, woodworking, or similar subtractive (material-removing) manufacturing processes. Swarf or chips can be small particles (such as the gritty swarf from grinding metal or the sawdust from sawing or sanding wood); long, stringy tendrils (such as the springy chips from turning tough metals, or long shavings from whittling); slag-like waste (such as is produced within pipe during pipefitting work); or stone fragments and dust (as in masonry).Some of these terms are mass nouns (such as swarf and sawdust) and some of them are count nouns (such as chips, filings, or shavings).

Turning is a machining process in which a cutting tool, typically a non-rotary tool bit, describes a helix toolpath by moving more or less linearly while the workpiece rotates. Usually the term "turning" is reserved for the generation of external surfaces by this cutting action, whereas this same essential cutting action when applied to internal surfaces (holes, of one kind or another) is called "boring".

Fine metallic filings or shavings removed by a cutting tool.

A deviation from a straight course; a turn.

(uncountable) The waste chips or shavings from an abrasive activity, such as metalworking, a saw cutting wood, or the use of a grindstone or whetstone.

The shaping of metal or wood on a lathe.

(countable) A particular waste chip or shaving.

Turnings Shavings produced in shaping metal on a lathe.

(obsolete) A faint or swoon.

(British) A turn or deviation from a straight course.

(transitive) To grind down.

(field hockey) At hockey, a foul committed by a player attempting to hit the ball who interposes their body between the ball and an opposing player trying to do the same.

To grow languid; to faint.

The shaping of wood or metal on a lathe.

To grow languid; to faint.

The act of turning.

The grit worn away from grindstones in grinding cutlery wet.

(plural only) Shavings produced by turning something on a lathe.

Present participle of turn

The act of one who, or that which, turns; also, a winding; a bending course; a flexure; a meander.

The place of a turn; an angle or corner, as of a road.

Deviation from the way or proper course.

Turnery, or the shaping of solid substances into various forms by means of a lathe and cutting tools.

The pieces, or chips, detached in the process of turning from the material turned; - usually used in the plural.

A maneuver by which an enemy or a position is turned.

The act of changing or reversing the direction of the course;

Act of changing in practice or custom;

A movement in a new direction;