A while back I bought myself an adcock and shipley 1es horizontal milling machine, and I've since spent time building a rotary 3phase converter, adding a screw feed to the x axis (used to be rack and pinion with one turn = 4 inches) etc etc. Still some stuff to do, e.g. convert the lever feed z axis to screw, but anyway.
I've also been hankering after a lathe recently, but lack of space & money have prevented me from getting one, so what to do?
Well, I had the bright (?) idea of turning one of the 40int tooling blanks I have into some form of adaptor with a myford nose thread (1 1/8" 12 TPI afaik), as that will allow me to mount the myford face plate I have, and also myford chucks.
To achieve this I bought myself a tool post off ebay and two cutting bits off rdg tools (total spend = 29.50), and set about trying to bodge it to the mill somehow (i.e. bolt it to the table).
I then spun up the tool blank to 128rpm and did a couple of test passes. To my utter surprise and astonishment, it actually seems to work
The chips are lovely and blue:
I've got a couple of youtube videos of it in action, the lighter cut being 1mm (of the radius), and the heavier 2mm. It's all hand feed, and the camera wandered off midway of one video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yO2Ldvn4Ko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1RSXhPphLo
The setup is not perfect, obviously, in that I can't make long parts, and there's no tailstock, however I don't envisage making parts longer than about 20cm anyway (realistic max length), and for drilling holes etc I'm going to have to make a 10mm "pilot" hole and then use a boring bar to get to size. Still, much better than no lathe, and I'm chuffed to bits my experiment worked
I've also been hankering after a lathe recently, but lack of space & money have prevented me from getting one, so what to do?
Well, I had the bright (?) idea of turning one of the 40int tooling blanks I have into some form of adaptor with a myford nose thread (1 1/8" 12 TPI afaik), as that will allow me to mount the myford face plate I have, and also myford chucks.
To achieve this I bought myself a tool post off ebay and two cutting bits off rdg tools (total spend = 29.50), and set about trying to bodge it to the mill somehow (i.e. bolt it to the table).
I then spun up the tool blank to 128rpm and did a couple of test passes. To my utter surprise and astonishment, it actually seems to work
The chips are lovely and blue:
I've got a couple of youtube videos of it in action, the lighter cut being 1mm (of the radius), and the heavier 2mm. It's all hand feed, and the camera wandered off midway of one video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yO2Ldvn4Ko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1RSXhPphLo
The setup is not perfect, obviously, in that I can't make long parts, and there's no tailstock, however I don't envisage making parts longer than about 20cm anyway (realistic max length), and for drilling holes etc I'm going to have to make a 10mm "pilot" hole and then use a boring bar to get to size. Still, much better than no lathe, and I'm chuffed to bits my experiment worked