Headstock

A lantern is a machine element of drive technology . It is a kind of simple rack , which consists of two long metal sheets at the sides , which are drilled at regular intervals and connected by means of welded bolts . In other words, a headstock is a kind of horizontally laid ladder on which a gear that engages and climbs on the bolts moves a machine .

Pin gears and lantern wheels are often in mining underground encountered as drive elements for slow movements, such as the moving of shearers in longwall .

The rack wheel is often driven electrically on a reduction gear or by means of a slow rotating hydraulic motor .

A headstock is comparatively easy to manufacture compared to a toothed wheel or rack, and yet it is stable and solid. The engagement between the headstock and the headstock wheel can be designed very easily so that even large amounts of dirt do not lead to malfunctions in the drive. However, headstocks are not well suited for high speeds .

Headstock gears are also generally less suitable for extremely high forces, since the headstock gear is often heavily rounded at the base circle and thus the tooth root is weakened.

Headstocks are usually built to a length that gives a weight that can still be reasonably moved by hand by one or two people (25 kg // 50 kg). The length of a headstock usually does not exceed two or three meters. It is connected to the neighboring headstock by means of lugs in the same grid dimension . In principle, this enables an endless drive path length.

A headstock and its headstock gear with a rack and the cogwheel of a mountain railway can be easily compared, with the only difference that the rack and gearwheel must be manufactured with hobbing much more precisely and costly, must be kept free of dirt and are suitable for higher movement speeds.