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Wait...

There's a mill attachment?

So with the mill attachment it's not just a lathe, it's a mill, as well?

It mounts to the ways with a vertical table. This gives you the X, Y, and Z axes. If it is designed well a milling attachment can be very handy. The end mill goes into the chuck and the workpiece is locked to the milling vice.

The milling attachment mounts on the cross slide instead of the compound, and provides a vertical screw and vise. Mine was made for the 16” lathe so I need to make an adapter. But it’s heavier and stiffer, too. It’s no replacement for a mill, but it will make things possible for those who don’t have a mill. And if you need to mill the end of a long shaft, such as to put a cross slot in it, good luck with that on a vertical knee mill.

Mine weighs 70 pounds.



This is clipped from a much larger photo so it’s hard to see. The vise is on the left, and the vertical screw pulls it on vertical dovetail ways. The horizontal base mounts on the cross slide. You use a collet chuck and mount an end mill (or whatever tool) in the spindle of the lathe. Then, the cross slide power feed drags the work piece in the vise across the spinning tool. It’s not rigid enough to take more that light cuts.

You can mount it at angles to square up the surface to be milled to the tool, even if it’s not parallel to the vise jaws.

The vise is not super precise as one would want on a mill table, so setup is tedious to dial in real accuracy. One spends a lot of time measuring things with a manual lathe.

Rick “but it does work” Denney

Hmm, yes. I recognize some of these words.

matt g wrote:[mention]Rick Denney[/mention], I’m hoping you post some more pics just so people can see the scale of that lathe!

Here’s a pic of the lathe with more context.



It’s nominally a 6-foot bed, but that’s the whole bed. It will turn 38” between centers. The 14-1/2” dimension is the swing—the largest diameter that can be turned without running into the ways. The chuck is 10” in diameter. It takes up about three feet by seven feet of floor space.

I just today installed a hoist and trolley to help handle the big 4-jaw chuck and the milling attachment. I’m running it in Unistrut, which will carry 600 pounds, using an old Jet half-ton chain hoist.



Rick “<$100 for the hoist and trolley—Joe would be proud” Denney

arpthark wrote:Hmm, yes. I recognize some of these words.

When I get it set up I’ll show some pics.

Rick “need to machine an adapter” Denney

Your garage looks bigger than my house

bort2.0 wrote:Your garage looks bigger than my house

The new shop is definitely bigger than my house.

Rick “ whole other topic” Denney

Rick Denney wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 5:05 am

bort2.0 wrote:Your garage looks bigger than my house

The new shop is definitely bigger than my house.

Rick “ whole other topic” Denney

Right on!

Project suggestion:

Valve stem, button and top valve cap for horn of your choice. Button can be all metal or with pearl inlay. Extra points for making bottom cap. The same setup to make the top cap will probably work for the bottom cap. Knurl the edges of buttons and caps? It's your project, man...

These parts can get a horn missing them back in action. Buy them from Allied, you say? Allied won't sell to you and, besides, the horn is old and no parts are available.

Yeah, buttons, stems and caps are on my list. Stems are easy. Buttons are moderately easy, if I can find a thread die that will work. Caps are possible, but only if the threads are inch-based. My lathe doesn’t do metric threading, though it will single-points threads as fine as 224 threads/inch.

Knurling is not difficult on this lathe, especially in brass or nickel-silver.

Rick “making two that look alike may be tricky :)” Denney

I predict that you will eventually retrofit with a computer...or perhaps not.

bloke wrote:I predict that you will eventually retrofit with a computer...or perhaps not. [emoji3]

Installing digital readouts isn’t an impossibility, but not before I’ve run out of stuff to learn using dial indicators and micrometers. My backlash on the newly rebuilt cross slide is only 0.008, so it’s easy to manage.

Rick “and a linear track on the bed would interfere with the taper attachment” Denney

Arbitrary statements and predictions prevent my posts from being incorrect.

Wade, I’ve just pulled the spindle on my craptastic drill press with the idea of correcting the runout, at least to some extent. If I am successful, I will let you know.

The plan is a Morse #2 reamer in a toolpost holder in the lathe, and spinning the spindle in the lathe. That should ensure concentricity, if the reamer will stay straight and not follow the hole too much. The concern is opening the taper too much making arbors sit too deeply. Gonna hafta go slow.

And the drill press spindle may be hardened too much. Haven’t tested that yet.

Alternatively, I could single-point skim the taper using a boring bar. But that’s less of a beginner attempt.

The worst that can happen is I ruin the drill press, but I can probably make a new spindle from scratch and get someone to weld on the pulley spline. The drill press is fairly useless now, though, with .060 runout at the tip of the chuck (it’s not the chuck and the bearings are tight).

Your drill press wasn’t as bad as I recall and may be easier to fix.

Rick “on the granite surface table getting measured now” Denney

On mine, the two parts are one, and not replaceable. I will eventually get a more accurate drill press.

And a lathe.

And a mill.

Oy…

bort2.0 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 7:02 pm Okay, move this to the other side of the railyard.



(It's a locomotive engine, right? )

I though it was a combination pot belly stove, sewing machine and hit and miss engine with a power take off attachment.

Rick Denney wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 2:22 pm Rick “making two that look alike may be tricky :)” Denney

Too true!

the elephant wrote:On mine, the two parts are one, and not replaceable. I will eventually get a more accurate drill press.

And a lathe.

And a mill.

Oy…

I was reasonably successful. I ended up machining the JT3 chuck taper to avoid opening up the Morse taper in the spindle too much. That would work with yours, too. I chucked up the top bearing journal in a 4C collet in the lathe spindle, and used the steady against the bottom bearing journal and indicated it in. I then machined a new taper that goes in the chuck. The arbor is now off-center but it corrects the error in the spindle.

Total runout at the chuck us now 0.006, which is probably the chuck.

The arbor just has to go in the right way from here on out. I ground in some markers to make that easy.



Rick “good enough for a drill press” Denney

...so how fast do you think you could knock out a few thousand .223 shells for personal use?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/l ... 85869.html