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lathe
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
lathe
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A piston destined to shuttle back and forth within a cylinder will be made on a lathe.
▪ And it comes first for one simple reason: civilization rolls on wheels, and lathes make wheels.
▪ Holly worked on alone at the lathe that fashioned the chairs' legs.
▪ It was Bert's private workshop, complete with a lathe and other skilled men's paraphernalia.
▪ It was not a retrofit, though it was more of an adaptation of a copying lathe than an original design.
▪ Murdoch had turned his hat on a lathe, thereby inventing a method of turning oval objects.
▪ Swarf from lathes lay thick on the floor below.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Lathe

Lathe \Lathe\ (l[aum][th]), n. [AS. l[=ae][eth]. Of uncertain origin.] Formerly, a part or division of a county among the Anglo-Saxons. At present it consists of four or five hundreds, and is confined to the county of Kent. [Written also lath.]
--Brande & C.

Lathe

Lathe \Lathe\ (l[=a][th]), n. [OE. lathe a granary; akin to G. lade a chest, Icel. hla[eth]a a storehouse, barn; but cf. also Icel. l["o][eth] a smith's lathe. Senses 2 and 3 are perh. of the same origin as lathe a granary, the original meaning being, a frame to hold something. If so, the word is from an older form of E. lade to load. See Lade to load.]

  1. A granary; a barn. [Obs.]
    --Chaucer.

  2. (Mach.) A machine for turning, that is, for shaping articles of wood, metal, or other material, by causing them to revolve while acted upon by a cutting tool.

  3. The movable swing frame of a loom, carrying the reed for separating the warp threads and beating up the weft; -- called also lay and batten.

    Blanchard lathe, a lathe for turning irregular forms after a given pattern, as lasts, gunstocks, and the like.

    Drill lathe, or Speed lathe, a small lathe which, from its high speed, is adapted for drilling; a hand lathe.

    Engine lathe, a turning lathe in which the cutting tool has an automatic feed; -- used chiefly for turning and boring metals, cutting screws, etc.

    Foot lathe, a lathe which is driven by a treadle worked by the foot.

    Geometric lathe. See under Geometric

    Hand lathe, a lathe operated by hand; a power turning lathe without an automatic feed for the tool.

    Slide lathe, an engine lathe.

    Throw lathe, a small lathe worked by one hand, while the cutting tool is held in the other.

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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
lathe

"machine for turning," early 14c., of uncertain origin, probably from a Scandinavian source (compare Danish drejelad "turning-lathe," Old Norse hlaða "pile of shavings under a lathe," related to hlaða "to load, lade;" see lade (v.)).

Wiktionary
lathe

Etymology 1 alt. (context transitive UK dialectal English) To invite; bid; ask. vb. (context transitive UK dialectal English) To invite; bid; ask. Etymology 2

alt. (context obsolete English) An administrative division of the county of Kent, in England, from the Anglo-Saxon period until it fell entirely out of use in the early twentieth century. n. (context obsolete English) An administrative division of the county of Kent, in England, from the Anglo-Saxon period until it fell entirely out of use in the early twentieth century. Etymology 3

n. 1 A machine tool used to shape a piece of material, or workpiece, by rotating the workpiece against a cutting tool. 2 The movable swing frame of a loom, carrying the reed for separating the warp threads and beating up the weft; a lay, or batten. 3 (context obsolete English) A granary; a barn. vb. 1 To shape with a lathe. 2 (context computer graphics English) To produce a 3D model by rotating a set of points around a fixed axis.

Related phrases:
WordNet
lathe

n. machine tool for shaping metal or wood; the workpiece turns about a horizontal axis against a fixed tool

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Lathe

A lathe is a machine tool that rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation, facing, turning, with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object with symmetry about an axis of rotation.

Lathes are used in woodturning, metalworking, metal spinning, thermal spraying, parts reclamation, and glass-working. Lathes can be used to shape pottery, the best-known design being the potter's wheel. Most suitably equipped metalworking lathes can also be used to produce most solids of revolution, plane surfaces and screw threads or helices. Ornamental lathes can produce three-dimensional solids of incredible complexity. The workpiece is usually held in place by either one or two centers, at least one of which can typically be moved horizontally to accommodate varying workpiece lengths. Other work-holding methods include clamping the work about the axis of rotation using a chuck or collet, or to a faceplate, using clamps or dogs.

Examples of objects that can be produced on a lathe include candlestick holders, gun barrels, cue sticks, table legs, bowls, baseball bats, musical instruments (especially woodwind instruments), crankshafts, and camshafts.

Lathe (graphics)

In 3D computer graphics, a lathed object is a 3D model whose vertex geometry is produced by rotating the points of a spline or other point set around a fixed axis. The lathing may be partial; the amount of rotation is not necessarily a full 360 degrees. The point set providing the initial source data can be thought of as a cross section through the object along a plane containing its axis of radial symmetry.

The lathe is so named because it produces the same type of object that a real lathe would produce: an object that is symmetrical about an axis of rotation. However, unlike objects produced by a real lathe, the object can have an axis of rotation through a hole (e.g. a torus).

Lathes are very similar to surfaces of revolution. However, lathes are constructed by rotating a curve defined by a set of points instead of a function. Note that this means that lathes can be constructed by rotating closed curves or curves that double back on themselves (such as the aforementioned torus), whereas a surface of revolution could not because such curves cannot be described by functions.

Lathe (disambiguation)

Lathe may refer to:

In woodworking and metalworking:

  • Lathe, used in turning wood, metals and other materials
  • Lathe (metal), a lathe used specifically for metals
  • Geometric lathe, used for making ornamental patterns on the plates used in printing bank notes and postage stamps
  • Rose engine lathe, a specialized kind of ornamental lathe

Other uses:

  • Lathe (county subdivision), formerly an administrative division of the county of Kent, England
  • Lathe (graphics), a method of forming 3D computer graphics
  • Learning and teaching in higher education, and hence the diploma awarded by the University of Oxford, PGDipLATHE
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "lathe".

The cheaply painted plaster was cracked along the walls and small blotches had fallen out of the ceiling, leaving irregular shaped holes that showed through to the lathe work beneath.

The fine white-birch dowels were first turned round on small lathes and afterwards into little bugle and bottle-shaped ornaments, then dyed a glistening black and strung on linen threads.

I pulled out the medicine cabinet, peering down into the lathing behind it.

Lathes, Drills, Planers, Hand Tools for Iron Work, new Woodworth Planing Machines, Resawing, Tenoning, Moulding Machines, Scroll Saws, Portable Steam Engine.

Understand me, Tichy, the obedience of a hammer, a lathe, or a computer is basically the same thing -- and that is not what we were after!

Jirrl were alternating use of the small lathe, truing the rocket heads and waiting for Justen and Nicos to form more casings.

Stooped, he strode stiffly to the machine shop and inquired of the machinist when the buzz saw and lathe were planning to take a fairly protracted intermission, because he, the ballet pianist and former concert pianist, wished to practice, very softly, some thing complicated, a so-called adagio.

Power Lathes, Drill Presses, Scrolls, Circular and Band Saws, Saw Attachments, Chucks, Mandrels, Twist Drills, Dogs, Calipers, etc.

None of the internal walls had been lathed and plaistered let alone pannelled or wainscoted so that the naked brick was everywhere visible, except where it was obscured by hangings in the drawing-room.

Marco Tinner, the elder son, officially owned the Traco Company, a Swiss firm that found, outfitted, and sold the sophisticated machinery--high-speed lathes, band saws, and tool grinders--to the Khan network.

Peering around his tree, Caine studied the four Argentians walking in a rough semicircle behind Lathe, Valen, Kwon, and Spadafora.

Lathe said, looking down at the silvery dragonhead ring on his own right hand and the red stones of its eyes.

The few available stationary steam engines worked twenty-four hour shifts in those early days, and the first thing they were given to do was the running of lathes and stompers and planers and millers working on turning out more stationary steam engines, of all sizes.

With a fretsaw I cut these down to smaller plates, discarding the ebonite at the edges, which was green with age, and turned them on a lathe, in a foul cloud of black dust that got into my hair, eyes, teeth, fingernails.

He knocked on the steel door happily loudly, seeing it all in his mind suddenly, how it would be then, some sturdy 403 Li little permanent post that drowsed along from day to day, like Jefferson Barracks or Fort Riley, with solid brick barracks and new-cut grass and well kept walks under the long afternoon shadows of big old oak trees that had been standing in the same place since before George Armstrong Custer had his hair cut by the Sioux, that would be the kind of place to re-enlist for, where the NCO quarters were brick too and not this jerrybuilt ship lathe they have here, and where you can take her right into a community and a little society that the married noncoms made and maintained for themselves alone.