0t--Heathway--the tilting lathe

[JHOLLAND1]

HEATHWAY-- undisputed monarch of glass lathes and crown jewel of british Midlands

my intrigue with this mark focused upon an obvious pivot incorporated into the bed and pedestal--

thanks to Dalibor Farney, this mystery is unraveled

stills from Tony G's website

action footage kind courtesy of Dalibor-- scroll 13:30

 

[dalmatiangirl61]

Well that's not something you see every day! Wish there was more info on why it was designed that way, was it intended to be used only in a vertical/horizontal application, or are there reasons to set it at an angle? I've had lots of requests for glass lathes, just never found one in the wild.

 

[toolmaker96]

Purely a guess, but it almost appears to be a horizontal lathe/VTL combo.

 

[sfriedberg]

toolmaker96, it's definitely a purpose-made glass lathe. Most work is done horizontally, as on a normal lathe. The Dalibor Farney guys are making big Nixie display tubes, and in all their videos that I've watch so far they only use their glass lathes horizontally. However, molten glass sags and slumps pretty quickly, and there are some operations where a vertical orientation makes it a bit easier to control what's happening.

One characteristic feature of glass lathes is that the tailstock has a pretty good size through hole and carries a chuck, almost like an undriven spindle, and there are provisions for feeding or venting gasses through either the headstock spindle or the tailstock.