Lathe exteriors are usually cleaned with a rag, a brush and a can of something, because nobody has decided what the steam is for. On the same machine the guard panels carry oil film, the base casting carries coolant sludge, the way covers carry graphite and fine swarf, and the control cabinet carries fingerprints. Those four soils do not respond to the same action, and the limits of steam on a lathe are set by three things: what the builder allows to get wet, what happens to painted surfaces and bare machined faces under heat, and where the condensed water goes afterwards. A buyer who pins those three down before choosing a model gets an honest answer; one who buys by catalogue gets a machine and a dispute.
What the steam is meant to remove, soil by soil
Write the soils down separately, because each has a different physical requirement. Way oil and hydraulic film on a guard panel need heat: a dry-steam pass followed immediately by a cloth, with the dwell stated in seconds rather than left to the operator. Dried coolant sludge at the sump surround and the floor line needs the wet-steam mode, a wipe, and then a dry pass. Fine swarf and graphite dust are not removed by steam at all; heat turns a pile of swarf into a mud that works its way into every gap, so it comes off with a brush and a vacuum first. If the soil on your lathes is mostly fresh cutting fluid rather than polymerised oil, that is worth saying in the enquiry, because a hot-water machine may be the right tool and a dry-steam machine may not be.
On the level of heat a fixed machine delivers, the published figures for the Fixed Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe HW02 are 160° steam at 0.8 MPa vapour pressure, 6 kW of heating power, an 80 L SUS304 tank with a tap-water inlet, and 220 V supply. Those are the numbers to test a quotation against, and you should ask which of them are measured at the nozzle rather than in the boiler. Mobile and hand-pushed units in the same PowerDe cleaning equipment range are listed with dry-steam, wet-steam and, on some models, hot-water modes; their steam temperature and pressure are not published, so ask for them per model instead of carrying the fixed machine's figures over.
The limit the machine builder sets, and it overrides everything
Before any method is discussed, get the builder's washdown position for that lathe model, in writing, and follow it. If the builder says no water on that machine, then steam is not the method, whatever the cleaning contractor prefers; the method becomes cloth, brush and vacuum, and the purchase question changes from "which steam machine" to "which vacuum and brush". Where no position exists, treat the following as off-limits until someone with authority says otherwise: the electrical cabinet and its door gaps, terminal boxes, encoder and linear-scale connectors, cable glands and conduit entries, drive fan and vent openings, bearing gaps and shaft ends, wick-felt seals, breathers, the work light, way-cover wiper lips, and the builder's data plate. On a lathe these are not scattered; they are concentrated at the headstock, the tool changer and the cabinet face, which is exactly where oil film accumulates and where an operator instinctively points the lance.
Coatings, bare machined faces and flash rust
Heat and pressure do not create coating failure, they reveal it. On painted or powder-coated sheet that is already chipped, lifting or crazed, a steam pass will lift the coating further and that panel is not recoverable. On brushed or polished stainless, an aggressive pass leaves a change of sheen that cannot be blended back. On bare machined faces, ways that have just been wiped clean, and unpainted castings, freshly degreased steel and cast iron flash-rust within a short time in a humid shop, and the risk is highest inside drill holes, at the ends of the ways and under cover plates. So the practical limit on a lathe is: steam is allowed on coated enclosures and guards that pass a test, and the machine must be dried and re-oiled within the window the builder or your own rust-prevention standard states. If nobody can state that window, establish it on your shop floor before a production lathe is cleaned.
Condensed water, and where it ends up on a lathe
Steam is low-volume water, but it still leaves water, and on a lathe the places it collects are the places that matter. Condensation runs into the way-cover overlap, into the tool-changer pocket, under the chuck guard, along the underside of the guard panels and down into the coolant tank rim. On the floor it collects at the wall junction and at the machine's levelling feet. A wet floor at the operator's standing position is a slip hazard on the same shift, and standing water on a concrete slab without a drain will still be there at the start of the next shift. So the method must say, line by line, who follows the steam with a squeegee or a vacuum, and whether the machine has a vacuum function for that purpose. The 80 L tank on a fixed machine solves the supply problem; it does nothing about water you cannot get off the floor.
Access, reach and the arithmetic of your shop
The fixed unit's footprint of roughly 1,200 by 800 by 1,200 mm including handles has to clear your aisles and your doors, and the distance from its water point and its 220 V socket to the far side of the furthest lathe decides whether one operator can work without improvising an extension lead. Measure with a tape: narrowest aisle, each doorway, the low beam above the wash area, and the turning space at the machine. Where lathes are spread across a shop rather than grouped at a service point, a battery-powered mobile steam cleaning machine moves the constraint from the cable to the run time, and then charging and refilling become line items in the shift. Size the job from your own counts: number of lathes, faces per lathe, minutes per lathe including waiting for heat and for drying, and the window you actually have between shifts.
Test on your own machine before the method is fixed
One pass on a hidden area of a lathe you actually operate answers more than any brochure will. Tape off a known distance from the nozzle, make a single pass, and then check four things: whether the coating blistered at an existing chip or edge, whether the sheen changed, whether water entered a seam, a drilled hole or a cover overlap, and how many minutes the surface took to dry. Leave a bare machined test spot until the next morning and look for rust. Repeat on the real soil, not on a clean panel, and time the whole job including protection, masking and drying. Then write the result as a permission with its conditions, for example "allowed on painted steel guard panels and the base casting, one dry-steam pass at the stated nozzle distance with an immediate wipe and the same-shift drying and re-oiling; not allowed on the cabinet face, encoder and scale connectors, wiper lips, nameplates, plastic windows, or any panel with lifting paint." That record is what an auditor and your own maintenance lead will read, and it belongs on the machine.
What to send before asking for a price
Send the lathe makes and models with photographs of the dirty faces, the soil described in the terms above, the builder's washdown position if one exists, the aisle and doorway measurements, the socket and water-point locations, and the number of lathes with the minutes available per lathe. PowerDe works on customised customized steam cleaning equipment and lists engineering, product development and hardware testing services, so that pack can go to sales@powerde.net or +86 13023198376 and be answered with a model, a method, and a plain statement of which lathe faces the machine would not be recommended for. Without those fields, any quotation is a guess at a specification, and it will change the first time someone walks your shop.
