Home Shop Machining/Equipment/Lathes/Annotated Lathe

The Parts of a Lathe, Annotated

The Parts:

• 01: Worklight. Often 24v for safety, then halogen for brightness, now LED is preferable
• 02: 4-way toolpost. Enables 4 tools to be mounted and when the top lever is loosened the body can rotate a different tool into position. Helpful for production work. Often now being replaced by a Quick Change Tool Post.
• 03: Coolant feed that is adjusted to provide cooling fluid direct to the cutting point.
• 04: Topslide aka compound slide. Can rotate on the cross slide to make angled cuts.
• 05: Saddle. the table that moves along the bed and carries the apron and cross slide
• 06: tailstock barrel which holds eg a drill.
• 07: lever to lock the tailstock barrel in position.
• 08: lever for releasing the tailstock body to move it along the bed.
• 09: tailstock which can move along the bed and be locked in place.
• 10: * Dual Inch/Metric Calibrated Tailstock Quill with Knockout Tang; Heavy Duty Two Speed Tailstock
• 11: tail stock hand feed wheel
• 12: Lathe bed. The individual horizontal parts are the 'ways' or 'shears'.
• 13: Leadscrew. This moves the saddle and hence cutting tool along the bed in a controlled way for screwcutting.
• 14: Trip bar. Only found on production lathes this sets stop points along the length of the machine.
• 15: base cabinet or stand
• 16: Fixing bolt. may be designed to work as a leveling screw.
• 17: Power control bar. Allows a lever on the moving saddle to rotate the bar and activate power on /off.
• 18: emergency stop and brake bar.
• 19: Feed rod. Rotates to move gears in the saddle to move the cutting tool along when feeding not screwcutting
• 20: Rack. A gear on the saddle turned by the feed rod (19) bears on this to move the saddle along.
• 21: Thread dial indicator. Used in screwcutting to keep an eye on the position of the thread/saddle
• 22: apron reverse feed mechanism
• 23: half nut engagement lever
• 24: One-shot Lubrication for Apron, Carriage, and Bed Ways
• 25: Apron
• 26: Apron handwheel, Feed handle or saddle handle. Moves the saddle along
• 27: Cross slide feed handle. Moves the cross slide moving the tool at right angles to the spindle axis
• 28: saddle stop. A limit stop that can be moved to set a reference point to stop cutting.
• 29: Thread selector on the Quick Change Gear Box screwcutting gearbox.
• 30: 3 more selectors on the QCGB. One selects between threading and feeding using (13) or (19)
• 31: Spindle Gear Attachment Lever
• 32: Head stock
• 33: Danger and Precautions Sign
• 34: Spindle Speed Lever : Selects 1, 2, 3 or 4 gear position on the spindle speed chart.
• 35: Threading/feed chart. This shows you how to set the quick change gear box (QCGB) levers to cut various threads
• 36: Emergency stop button. (sometimes called and "E-Stop" or "EMO" for "EMergency Off")
• 37: Headstock casting
• 38: Chuck safety shield
• 39: Chuck ("three jaw" chuck shown here. There are other types)