Lathe machine has been widely used in the industries since ages. It is a machine used to cut and shape the metals and wood at high speed. The very basic model of this machine was primarily designed to cut cylindrical metal stocks. Instead of basic lathe machine, now-a-days, CNC lathe machine is in vogue. CNC means computerized numeric control, in CNC lathe machine every operation is performed by giving commands from a computer.
The main components of this machine are bed, ways, and headstock. The bed is the essential component that ensures working part of the lathe. The ways are accurately machined parallel to the axis of spindle as well as to each other. And the headstock carries head spindle as well as mechanism for operating it. In addition, tailstock, feed rod, apron, compound rest, cross feed slide, carriage and lead screw are also the mainly used elements.
Among all types of lathe, only vertical turret lathe don't rotate the work piece on its axis for execution of different operations. Different types of lathe machine are:
1. Engine Lathes
? Bench Type Engine Lathe
? Floor-Mounted Engine Lathe
? Sliding Gap-Type Floor Mounted Engine Lathe
? Tool Room Lathe
2. Turret Lathe
? Floor-Mounted Horizontal Turret Lathe
3. Special Purpose Lathe
Small lathes are generally bench mounted and are lightweight too. It can easily transport in wheeled vehicles. On the contrary, large lathes are floor mounted and require a special kind of transportation. Engine lathes are generally used for the places where too many operations are to be performed and that don't require transportation of lathe from one place to other. On the contrary, turret milling machines and special purpose lathes are used where bulk or mass production takes place.
Operations of lathe machine
? Cutting
Cutting operation performs cutting of metals, wood, and other such material in desired shape and size.
? Facing
Facing is necessary to do almost every work through lathe machine. In this operation, the work piece is held in lump and the facing tool is fed from the center of work piece in the direction of outer surface to the center by using a cross-slide.
? Plain Turning
Plane turning is another major operation of removing excess amount of material from the surface of cylindrical work piece. In this, the work piece is held either in chuck or in the middle of vertical machining center. The longitudinal feed is either by power or manually.
? Step turning
This operation produces different steps of varying diameter of the work piece. The operation of step turning is almost similar than plain turning.
? Drilling
Drilling is an operation of making a hole in the work piece with the help of a drill. The drill is fed generally by rotating the work piece and by rotating the tail stock hand wheel.
? Reaming
Reaming is an operation of finishing the previously drilled hole. A reamer is held in the tail stock and then fed into the hole in the same way as that for drilling.
