Abstract Today, there is a large demand for the machining of simple and/or complex shaped components made of difficult to cut materials such as ceramics. Recently, there is also a demand to machine new type of steels, having restrictions in chemical composition (e.g. lead and sulphur free) in order to comply with recent governmental EU regulations. This paper first describes on-going and planned research activities on the machining (turning) of these advanced materials. For the machining of various ceramic materials, an ultrasonic assisted tooling system has been designed, manufactured and integrated within the available Mori Seiki NL2000Y/500 mill-turn centre. The developed system has been tested through initial machining experiments on aluminium and ZrO 2 . Second, this paper also briefly describes other on-going and planned research and education activities in which the Mori Seiki NL2000Y/500 is involved. It includes advanced NCprogramming of multi-axis machine tools, energy efficient machining of ecological steels and the development of training programs for 3 rd years mechanical engineering students
