A lathe is a machine tool used in the manufacturing industry for shaping and cutting various materials. It can be used to perform a variety of operations, such as cutting, sanding, and turning. Lathes work by rotating the workpiece while a tool bit is held stationary against it. This allows the tool bit to cut, shape, or form the workpiece as it rotates.
There are different types of lathes, but they all consist of a few basic parts to perform their operations.
Parts of the Lathe Machine
There are different parts of the lathe machine:
- Headstock: The headstock is usually located on the left side of the lathe and is equipped with gears, spindles, chucks, gear speed control levers, and feed controllers. It is mounted in a fixed position on the inner ways, usually at the left end. Using a chuck, it rotates the work.
- Tailstock: It is also sometimes called a loos headstock or a puppet head. Usually located on the right side of the lathe, the workpiece is supported at the end. Fits on the inner ways of the bed and can slide towards any position of the headstock to fit the length of the workpiece. An optional taper turning attachment would be mounted to it.
- Bed: The main parts of the lathe, Usually made of cast iron. Provides a heavy rigid frame on which all the main components are mounted. all parts are bolted to the bed. It includes the headstock, tailstock, carriage rails, and other parts.
- Carriage: The carriage is located between the headstock and the tailstock and contains an apron, saddle, compound rest, cross slide, and tool post. Moves on the outer ways. Used for mounting and moving most of the cutting tools.
- Chuck allows the mounting of difficult workpieces that are not round, square, or triangular.
- Feed rod: The lead screw is used to move the carriage automatically during threading. Used to connect the feed box and slide box, and transmit the speed and power of the feed box to the slide box, so that the slide box achieves longitudinal linear motion.
- Lead screw: The screw is specially set to bend various threads. When bending other surfaces of the workpiece, only smooth screws are used instead of screws. Students should distinguish the difference between a light screw and a lead screw based on the contents of the slide box.
- Chip Pan: It is present at the bottom of the lathe. A chip pan is used to collect the chips that are produced during the lathe operation.
- Hand Wheel: It is the wheel that is operated by hand to move a cross slide, carriage, tailstock, and other parts that have a handwheel.
- Cooling device: The cooling device primarily uses a cooling water pump to suppress the slotted fluid in the water tank and spray it to the cutting location, wash the chips, and lower the cutting temperature. Smoothes the surface to improve tool and service life. Surface processing quality of the workpiece.
- Legs: They are supports that carry the entire weight of the machine over them. The prevailing method is to use cast legs. Both feet are firmly secured to the floor through foundation spots to prevent vibration in the machine.
- Slide box: This is the control box for the feed movement of the lathe. It is furnished with a mechanism that turns the rotary motion of the light rod and the lead screw to the linear motion of the tool post.
- Gearbox: inside the headstock, providing multiple speeds with a geometric ratio by moving levers.
- Spindle: Hole through the headstock to which bar stock can be fed, which allows shafts that are up to 2 times the length between lathe centers to be worked on one end at a time.
- Cross Slide: Mounted on the traverse slide of the carriage, and uses a handwheel to feed tools into the workpiece.
- Tool Post: To mount tool holders in which the cutting bits are clamped.
- Guideways: To ensure the accurate movement of tailstock and carriage on the bed, comes in outer or inner ways.
- Apron: Attached to the front of the carriage, it has the mechanism and controls for moving the carriage and cross slide.
