The lathe is known as the mother of all machines. In simple terms, on lathe machine, you will move the cutting tool against a revolving workpiece to remove material to achieve the desired shape and size. However, the machine has several parts and accessories that make it a versatile and accurate metalworking machine.
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Lathe Parts Names
Your Lathe has a bed which is the base of the machine and has guideways on the top. All the other parts of a lathe such as a headstock, carriage, feed mechanism, tailstock, feed screw, lead screw, and cooling system are assembled on the bed.
1. Head stock
The head stock of your lathe is located on the left-hand side of the bed and houses the machine spindle, drive, selection of speeds, feeds, and gear ratio using simple change levers. You can mount your work-piece holding devices like chuck or live center on the spindle.
2. Tail Stock
The tailstock of your lathe is located on the right-hand side of the bed and can be moved/locked manually on the guideways and support long work-pieces. You can hold drill, reamer, tap, boring tools on the tailstock, and do machining.
3. Lathe Bed
The lathe made has guideways that are machined very precisely. The tail stock and the carriage along with the compound slide moves on these guideways.
4. Lathe carriage
The carriage of a lathe machine is assembled on the bed and you can move it parallel to the spindle axis manually or with power and lock at any position. Compound rest, cross slide, and tool post with tools are mounted on the top of your lathe carriage and facilitate transverse and angular movement to the tool.
The relative position of the tool and the work-piece in your lathe indicates feed or depth of cut. Your lathe tool has three types of feed viz. parallel to the spindle axis affected by the movement of the carriage, transverse feed by moving cross slide, and taper feed by swiveling the compound slide.
5. Tool Post
As the name suggests the tool post holds the cutting tool. The tool holder is mounted on the cross slide. Depending on the design it may have a quick clamping mechanism to enable you to change the tool fast.
You can hold a number of lathe tools on the tool post including turning tools, thread cutting tool, knurling tool, parting off tool etc.
6. Feed Rod
The feed rod of your lathe is a long shaft with a keyway and transmits the power from the headstock drive to the apron gears and powers the movement of the carriage.
7. Lead Screw
The lead screw in your lathe allows you to cut various types/sizes of thread by selecting the correct gear ratio, speeds, and feeds and can be disengaged when not in use.
8. Chuck
The working holding device, usually a chuck or collet is mounted on the spindle. The main motor of the machine drives the spindle that is attached to the head stock of the machine revolves.
A three-jaw self-centering chuck is the most commonly used work-holding device on a lathe machine.
9. Cooling Unit
The cooling system of your Lathe has a coolant tank filled with coolant, coolant pump, and piping to direct the flow of coolant on the cutting area. Coolant helps you to reduce the heat build-up, provide lubrication between the tool and workpiece, and avoid work-piece rusting and flush away the chips and particles.