Abstract: A lathe (10) having a lathe bed (11) on which is mounted a cutting station at which a cutting tool (13) can be mounted, a guide defining a guide path for guiding relative feeding movement between a workpiece holder (14) and the cutting tool (13), and drive means (15) for relatively moving the workpiece and the cutting tool (13) to engagement with each other. In order to provide a gap-swing facility, and avoid present requirement in known lathes to provide a “removable gap-piece”, the invention provides a guide in the form of three parallel guide elements, namely a main front guide-way (17), a tailstock bed-way (18) and a rear ante-roll guide-way (19), which are spaced apart from each other and relative to the centre line (16) of the workpiece holder (14). The three parallel guide elements in the invention provide a permanent gap or cavity in the lathe bed structure (11), to provide the required gap-swing facility and substantially without loss of guide-way support.

Abstract: A lathe (10) has a lathe bed (11) on which is mounted a cutting station at which a cutting tool (13) can be mounted, a guide defining a guide path for guiding relative feeding movement between a workpiece holder (14) and the cutting tool (13), and drive means (15) for relatively moving the workpiece and the cutting tool (13) to engagement with each other. In order to provide a gap-swing facility, and avoid the present requirement in known lathes to provide a “removable gap-piece”, the invention provides a guide in the form of three parallel guide elements, namely a main front guide-way (17), a tailstock bed-way (18) and a rear ante-roll guide-way (19), which are spaced apart from each other and relative to the center line (16) of the workpiece holder (14). The three parallel guide elements (17, 18, 19) gap or cavity so that the required gap-swing facility is provided substantially without loss of guide-way support.