What is a lathe

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As in all things one comes across in life, a clear definition of terms is needed for a proper understanding of the subject matter at hand. For without a clear definition, there could be misunderstandings and misconceptions. The same is applicable in terms of the phrase used cnc lathe. What do we clearly mean by used cnc lathe? Furthermore, in order to define a used cnc lathe, we need to first have a background of simply what is a lathe. This maiden post will be geared towards the topic of what is a lathe before we jump on to what is a used cnc lathe.

Well for one, a lathe is a machine tool that is used to machine a shape from a piece of raw material. The raw material could be wood, cast iron, steel, titanium, inconel or any other exotic alloy material or other commonly used material such as aluminum. Furthermore, a lathe is considered as a turning machine as opposed to milling machines. In its most basic form, a lathe comprises of a headstock, and a tool post. The headstock spins the part or the raw material and the tool post that holds the cutting tool, cuts the material to give it the shape that is desired. In the early days, the headstock obtained its motion from belts that were dropped down from common overhead shafts, which were later replaced by individual motors that could spin at different revolution rates depending upon the material being machined. And similary, the tool post that originally carried only one tool was later modified to carry multiple tools on a turret that could be spun, manually of course, to different positions to activate different tools such as threading and cut off tools.

While those were the humble beginnings of the lathe, designers and machine builders rapidly advanced technology to update the humble lathe to accommodate more features to satisfy the ever growing demand for higher productivity levels. A tailstock was added to enable turning of longer parts and threading operations could be performed effectively by the use of proper threading tools. In order to increase the life of the cutting tools, coolant supply was incorporated. Whereas the original lathes were simply equipped with three jaw or four jaw chucks, collet chucks were soon introduced to hold parts and remove parts in rapid succession. Such manual lathes were usually built very sturdy with heavy cast iron beds and some of them could be found in operation even today in some factories in the world.

That in brief has been the history of the lathe which is the basic machine tool of the machining industry. Now that the basis has been established, in our next post we will address the question of what is a cnc lathe. See you soon!