Positioning Pm932 And Pm1236

In my old shop I had the mill and the lathe at right angles to each other. When you cranked the mill table all the way to the right, the handwheel cleared the lathe headstock by 1 inch. When standing in a normal work position, just to the right of center on the mill, all I had to do was turn to the right and was almost in position to work on the lathe. My shop was 12x14, so a bit crowded.

Now in the new shop, I have the lathe and mill facing each other, handwheel to handwheel is about 34 inches. Plenty of room to work between them.
 
Okay, now that I understand better... and I'm more alert...

For the lathe... considering I can already feed roughly 30" from the right side, it seems like a waste having 3' on the left if it will only increase the feed by 6", especially considering I could remove the tailstock and feed even longer items from the right. And that will rarely, if ever, happen. I still need room on the left to gain access to the head but even moving the lathe another foot to the left helps.

For the mill... with the lathe another foot to the left, the mill would now have 9' 3" of total space. With the mill centered, I would have 3' 4" of lateral space at each end of a centered table. Or with the table fully extended that would be 4' 8" and 2' 3" at the ends.

When it comes to both machines, I honestly don't see myself turning or milling very large and/or long pieces. In both cases I bought bigger than I'll ever use for other reasons. But since the mill is still in the crate, and the lathe is still on order, and I've never used either, it can easily be said I'm full of it. I could still make changes to the above. Probably the next two moves are position the mill closer to the lathe and/or out from the wall until the table is beyond the front of the lathe. So feel free to tell me how it is.
 
Things didn't go as quickly as I hoped the past few days but I'm okay with that because if I hadn't clarified a few things, I would have regretted them later. Most of the wiring is finished, just not run into the workshop yet because I wasn't sure exactly where to put the outlets.

I removed the old baseboards because they were installed with the bottom edge touching the concrete floor which doesn't work with anything but a bare concrete floor. Needed to do this at some point so might as well have been now. Plus, in order for the new tiles to expand/contract, the baseboard needs installed so it's barely touching the top of the tiles. I also patched and spot primed the walls... only the ones that I could get to which was most of it... and will paint them with a gloss paint to add some durability. It will have to be white due to the lighting which isn't bad but it's not great either.

There is only one double window in the room but it's on the short side since about half of the front wall is underground. And there are only two recessed lights for the entire room... one bulb each. Not exactly sure how to improve the lighting yet as I refuse to start hacking the ceiling. Since this is a finished room... and with white walls... several others mentioned hanging shower curtains to protect the walls in the are of the machines. They did it with their rooms and said it made a huge difference. They're even mounted so they can be pushed out of the way when the machines aren't being used.

Attached another picture of the wall where the machines will go. No fancy camera so I took two pictures and stitched them together. The long horizontal run of blue tape on the left is where the lathe will be. The blue cross on the right marks the center position of the mill. The small pieces show where the studs are located in those areas. The two pieces of wide blue tape closer to the bottom of the wall are where the outlets will go.

Thanks again for everyone's help. Time for me to get back to work.

Workshop.jpg
 
Here is how I parked mine FWIW. So far this is working and there is room across the corner for full table travel.

proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fraceabilene.com%2Fmachine%2F12X36%2Fimage%2F12x36_013.jpg
 
Thanks Chris. I've run across several pictures showing that same position and not only don't I have a problem with it, but it would probably work just fine for me. It's difficult not to get tied up in the logic of bigger is better and that applies to the available space as well. The difference here is I have the space and only wanted to make the best use out of it as I could. Plus I don't really need to save the space for anything else because this is it for that room other than storing the tooling for both machines and various pieces of metal for future use. The only other major piece of equipment I'd like to have is a Miller TIG machine, but that will go in the garage. I'm content with the current setup and will update the above drawing to reflect the change. Thanks for chiming in.
 
I like the way Falcon does it, put the mill into a corner. I have done it that way in all 3 of my shops, it saves space for sure.

michael
 
By the way - very nice tools.

LOL - it's about the only space left for it. The "clean" work area in the building is 12x24 and I keep bringing things in. I continue to work for a "BP" size mill. Wife says "Where are you going to put it?" Of course the answer is "Get me one, I'll figger it out after we unload it." :)
East side
Shop1.jpg

West side
Shop2.jpg

All around the shop...
 
Last edited:
My PM25 sits in the middle of a 56 in space, this is required because of the handles on each end of the table. it appears to have 20 inches of total movement in X. You can probably figure 58 inches for your 22 in travel machine.
 
This is pretty simple to figure out if your table is 30 and the travel is 22 inches add them together then divide that by 2 in this case 26" from Center. now just add in for the crank or power feed. Also I doubt you will want more than 30" unsupported hanging out of the headstock. (That will allow turning a part up to 6-7 ' long) Keep in mind 1" solid round 30" long will get a bit of a wobble at 300+ rpm. if not supported. Concrats on the new Machines. Any reason they could not sit at 90 deg. to eachother?
Mark
 
That's unbelievable Falcon... I'm impressed! My first reaction is how do you find anything, but I'm sure you manage just fine. So if the room was twice that size wouldn't you want to spread everything out more? My workbench, drill stand, tool cabinets, air compressor, etc. are all in the garage and that's where they will stay.

Very close Mark... the mill has a 32" table with 22" of travel so that's 27" from center without considering the crank and power feed. It's in the crate so I'm not sure how much additional space they will take up but I obviously have the room.

Good point on the wobble. I doubt I'll ever turn anything over 3 feet long in the lathe but it's definitely something I'll need to keep my eye on.

There are a couple ways I could put the mill and lathe at 90 degrees to each other but there are some limitations. I have a drawing of the floor plan somewhere so I'll post it here later today.

Thanks
 
Back
Top