1. The Broken Lathe By: Billy Degitz

4. I never thought we could do it, but we broke the lathe! This is how it happened. We were cutting too fast and it crashed.

6. Now the fun begins because we have to fix it. It’s a very hard fix because the gear teeth are ground off.

8. First, we have to take the lathe apart to get to the gears. Then, we take the gears out.

10. After we take the gears out, we can try to fix them. Sometimes they can’t be fixed.

12. We found out we can’t fix the gears. We have to make new gears!

14. The first step in making new gears is create a program on the computer and that’s hard. Then we transfer it to the CNC which is the machine that cuts the pieces. It cuts the pieces so the Cincinnati (a gear cutting machine) can cut the gears.

16. Our instructor, Mr. D, has me, Matt, and Jasmine work on making the gears. This is a hard job, but we get to learn a lot.

18. We got the gears finished. Now comes the fun part because this is “blood, sweat and tears” part of the work.

20. Finally, we got the gears done by just putting it back together. Ten hours later, we finally got it the lathe back together.

22. Now the test: We turn it on, and it purrs like a kitten. Great! Well, it turns out we can get back to work, and everyone is happy.

23. Billy Degitz is a junior at the Lawrence County Career & Technical Center. He is enrolled in the Machine Technology program and is from the Union Area School District. I would like to dedicate this book to my shop teacher Mr. Mike Data.