Lathe

In woodworking/metalworking[?], a lathe is a machine which rapidly spins a block of material along a horizontal axis so that when abrasive tools are applied to the block, it can be shaped to produce an object which has symmetry about the rotation axis. Examples include candlesticks, table legs, and baseball bats.

The material is held in place by two prongs (at least one of which can be moved horizontally to accommodate varying material lengths). An adjustable horizontal metal rail between the material and the operator accommodates the positioning of shaping tools. With wood, it is common practice to press and slide sandpaper against the still-spinning object after shaping.

see also woodworking

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In 3D computer graphics, a lathed object is a 3D model whose vertex geometry is produced by rotating the points of a spline[?] or other point set around a fixed axis. The lathing may be partial; the amount of rotation is not necessarily a full 360 degrees. The point set providing the intial source data can be thought of as a cross section through the object.