[How-To] Mounting a medium lathe on top of a rolling tool chest?????

[Josey Whales]

anyone have experience trying this? I know people have done it, but i have not seen any follow up if they kept it or abandoned the idea.

I ordered a PM1228VF-LB, it is about 500lbs alone.

It would be nice to be able to move it around the shop floor on casters, but will it machine well on casters?

Also i am looking for a rolling tool box that is about 54 inches long and only about 30 inches high. Do they make tool boxes that short?

I did buy the PM stand, but now taking another look at that decision. it would be nice to be able to move the lathe, and have all the accessories in drawers under the lathe. But will it work? is my question.

 

[davidpbest]

I don't move mine often, but I have. The problem with this idea is that any stand that is light weight enough to move around is going to flex and possibly throw out the alignment of the bed ways and such. The stand I built was designed to get under it with a pallet jack when I need to move it. The leveling feet you see in the photo provide just the right amount of clearance for the pallet jack forks. When it's at rest it sits on immovable pads epoxied to the concrete floor below my sub-floor. Plenty of details here, and a few others have copied the design and used various toolbox drawer configurations under the chip pan. If you want names of who and what, let me know.

 

[Josey Whales]

I like that idea. Pallet jack. I have a welding equipment . I can customize the frame. How heavy is your lathe...?

 

[davidpbest]

I like that idea. Pallet jack. I have a welding equipment . I can customize the frame. How heavy is your lathe...?

The stock 1340GT is 1100 pounds. Of course, I have added a tool rack and a bunch of other stuff, and the entire thing, as you see it is about 2,200 pounds. My pallet jack is rated at 4,000 pounds (I have other machines that are heavier).

 

[Nutfarmer]

I know people do what your talking about. It's best to find a solid permanent place for a lathe if you want to do accurate work. It's amazing how much a big piece of cast iron that's the bed of a lathe can move. The lighter lathes even more. Every time the lathe is moved you will be fighting not to be cutting tapers.

 

[addertooth]

I put a small lathe on a wooden bench, but between the wooden bench and the lathe is a Stone Slab to tame any flex the wood could have. With the stone slab (preferably Granite), you can get good long-term stability. The slab was purchased from a Granite Countertop company; it was considered a "scrap piece" by them. Batches of Granite are not consistent in color, so once a slab has had most of it carved up and used, it has little value to them. They know it will never be an exact COLOR match for another slab. They sell it cheap.

 

[B2]

Nice to have the drawers under the lathe. There is not room for them the way my PM1440GT is built at the factory. However it comes with stands mounted at the two ends.

I made caster mounts for each of the 4 corners of the lathe feet locations and mounted external casters. These mounts have a 1/2" thick steel plate that bolts to the original stand bottom bolt holes but stick out far enough to attache my caster brackets as well as to have a tapped 1/2" bolt hole which I then use for leveling bolts. I went to PM measured the bottom of the stands carefully, built the caster mounts and then went back and mounted it all together at PM. (PM was very nice to let me do this and to lend a hand when needed. Tony was a big help! He also raised the lathe so that we could block it while I mounted things.) We rolled it all round the floor at PM. It rolled smoothly and neither the lathe nor the casters appeared to flex at all. Later they blocked it on a pallet and delivered it to me. (I also live in Pittsburgh.) We had to roll the lathe down a short hallway and turn and go into a smallish door and the casters worked great for this. I attached the two lathe stands together at the bases by a couple of angle iron rods running from end to end.... to stabilize the stands during movement, but I don't really think they were needed. These come off easy. In addition there are two bars that tie the front and back stand plates together. So that every thing can be easily removed, if needed, the caster mounts etc are all bolted together with 1/4-20 bolts, even though welding would have saved a lot of machining, drilling and tapping time. By using the off board caster brackets I did not raise the over all height of the lathe much.

So the 6 long 1/2" leveling bolts (four at the spindle and 2 at the tail stock stands) easily lift the lathe off of the casters once in place. However, I also did a more modern (solid state control electronics) VFD conversion to allow the 3 phase motor to run on single phase at variable speed with additional features. This is all mounted in the original electronics hole in the back of the lathe stand (no external boxes). With this lousy factory location for the electronics, being able to roll the lathe out from the wall to work at the back side is really nice! See Figures in the attachment "PM 1440GT Part 1 FacOriglElecDescript DNL L910_1440.pdf" at my VFD conversion posting:

VFD conversion via solid state electronic components. PM1440GT, VFD, 3-phase

VFD conversion using solid state electronic components. I finally finished documenting my PM1440GT lathe VFD conversion and want share it. It took me longer to write this up than it did to actually build the new electronics! (Are these sorts of things every really finished?) I apologize...

www.hobby-machinist.com

I will also post a few pictures here as attachments:

More pictures are attached.

One of these days, I will roll the lathe out and lay shower floor rubber down under the lathe to keep oil off of the basement concrete! I did this for my mill and the casters roll right across the thin rubber without it buckling up. It has been great for this purpose. I also put some cardboard down on top of the rubber to soak up the oil splashes and leaks! There is a lot of oil around when the mill flood cooling is used.

 

[Christianstark]

How do these do? Anyone tried something similar?


Casters Set

 

[B2]

I do not know anything about these, but I am a little skeptical. They look interesting, but not for sure I trust the numbers that they claim. Might feel differently if I had one in my hands to work with. They do look interesting, but for my 1750# + lathe I wanted to have overkill. So I purchased the steel casters in my photos (1000# each) I did not want a wheel that might break. I would not leave my lathe on casters while I was running it, but I seen that these have a lowering foot. I got them on Amazon from a place called Service Caster Brand and they seem good. They have all sizes and types.

 

[Cadillac STS]

I searched “lathe on tool box” and there are several images of it done