PRACTICAL TECHNIQUES & KNOW-HOW FOR MAKING & MEASURING IN THE LABORATORY & WORKSHOP

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A GLASSLATHE: A SEMI-AUTOMATIC GLASS WORKING MACHINE FOR SCIENTIFIC GLASSBLOWING I

Basic Structure

On this and other pages concerning the glass working machine, passing the cursor over the diagram below will generate a magnifier to observe details of the drawings. Using the mouse wheel the magnification can be varied. To give sufficient resolution to make the drawings useful, they need to be fairly large files and will take a few moments to load.

Described in these pages is a small semi-automatic glassworking lathe designed for precision glass-blowing of components up to about 60mm diameter. The machine consists of a flat bed fitted with tracks and a rack along its length. The section of the bed is shown below:

The roller bearings on the mobile components run in and against the inner surface of the side rails to minimise horizontal and vertical shake and are supplemented by adjustment screws to eliminate any residual side shake. Materials are steel and aluminium alloy. Electrical components are from Farnell Electronic Components Ltd and the Farnell part numbers are specified on the drawings. The headstock and tailstock bearings are Ford Transit rear axle bearings and were chosen to permit a 50mm bore size for the lathe.