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)