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History of Lathe Machine

The lathe is an ancient tool that was used as early as ancient Egypt and Assyria. It was important during the Industrial Revolution as the first machine tool and led to other machine tools. The earliest lathes had two people, one turning the wood and the other cutting shapes. During the Middle Ages, a pedal was added so one person could operate it. Later, mechanized power like water wheels powered lathes for faster work. Today, manually operated and computerized CNC lathes are both widely used.

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Jayesh Prajapati
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601 views3 pages

History of Lathe Machine

The lathe is an ancient tool that was used as early as ancient Egypt and Assyria. It was important during the Industrial Revolution as the first machine tool and led to other machine tools. The earliest lathes had two people, one turning the wood and the other cutting shapes. During the Middle Ages, a pedal was added so one person could operate it. Later, mechanized power like water wheels powered lathes for faster work. Today, manually operated and computerized CNC lathes are both widely used.

Uploaded by

Jayesh Prajapati
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HISTORY OF LATHE MACHINE

The lathe is an ancient tool, dating at least to ancient


Egypt and known to be used in Assyria and ancient
Greece.
The lathe was very important to the Industrial
Revolution. It is known as the mother of machine tools,
as it was the first machine tool that lead to the invention
of other machine tools.

The origin of turning dates to around 1300 BCE when


the Ancient Egyptians first developed a two-person lathe.
One person would turn the wood work piece with a rope
while the other used a sharp tool to cut shapes in the
wood.
Ancient Rome improved the Egyptian design with the
addition of a turning bow. In the Middle Ages a pedal
replaced hand-operated turning, allowing a single person
to rotate the piece while working with both hands.
The pedal was usually connected to a pole, often a
straight-grained sapling. The system today is called the
"spring pole" lathe. Spring pole lathes were in common
use into the early 20th century.
An important early lathe in the UK was the horizontal
boring machine that was installed in 1772 in the Royal
Arsenal in Woolwich.
It was horse-powered and allowed for the production
of much more accurate and stronger cannon used with
success in the American Revolutionary War in the late
18th century.
One of the key characteristics of this machine was that
the workpiece was turning as opposed to the tool,
making it technically a lathe (see attached drawing).
Henry Maudslay who later developed many
improvements to the lathe worked at the Royal Arsenal
from 1783 being exposed to this machine in the
Verbruggen workshop.

During the Industrial Revolution, mechanized power


generated by water wheels or steam engines was
transmitted to the lathe via line shafting, allowing faster
and easier work.
Metalworking lathes evolved into heavier machines
with thicker, more rigid parts. Between the late 19th and
mid-20th centuries, individual electric motors at each
lathe replaced line shafting as the power source.
Beginning in the 1950s, servomechanisms were
applied to the control of lathes and other machine tools
via numerical control, which often was coupled with
computers to yield computerized numerical control
(CNC). Today manually controlled and CNC lathes coexist
in the manufacturing industries.

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