I am just looking at a lot of different cnc lathe specs, and not really sure what they mean by certain terms, such as Swing, Distance to Centers, Swing over bed, apron, etc.

Is there a picture anywhere that details what all these things mean? sorry for the newbie questions!

Try swinging a 3' axe in a room, given 2 foot arms. You would need at least 5' right, left, fore and aft. A room 10' square would give you a 10 foot "swing".

Put a china cabinet in the room and you have a reduced swing "over the cabinet".

Remove the chuck and replace it with a dead center such as you find on wood lathes and were once "standard" on metal lathes then slide the tail stock away from the head to the max and you have so many inches "between the centers".

Try searching those terms on Yahoo or Google.

ALL of us were green horns at some time so don't be bashful about asking, but a bit of advice: try to take a "machine shop" course in some community college. Machines can and will KILL YOU just for just stupid mistake and you won't know what is stupid till you are educated. Best not get that education in the "school of hard knocks"!!!

(For example, don't touch a turning piece in the lathe with a piece of fabric or a gloved hand

Good luck, hang in there and READ!

well I did take a machine shop course in the county college, but that was just using manual bridgeports and manual logan engine lathes. We never did cnc stuff so that's why I was looking to get a small cnc for my home use to learn on.

the swing description you gave still leaves me a bit confused... I'm trying to see how this relates to the piece of bar stock turning in the lathe? or is the swing just talking about the distance the turret with the cutting tools can move along the X and Z axis?

http://www.mini-lathe.com/Mini_lathe/Introduction/introduction.htm#Glossary

give that site a read, it has a bunch of basic terms that should help you get started.

basically what he was trying to say was that if you have your lathe in front of you and try to mount a bunch of different size of stock in there eventually you will hit the bottom of your lathe. So if you measure from the middle of your chuck to the bed of the lathe you will get the radius of the largest diameter part you can turn before you hit the lathe bed.

I actually like the description jhowelb gave...

Swing really refers to the circle scribed by what ever is being turned in the spindle of whatever machine. If it's a fly cutter the dimensions aren't really relevant.

KOS, that web page covers most of the jargon....good show!