semi-Diy lathe machine

Have you considered making a concrete lathe? I have no experience in this area, but I have been intrigued by what I've read about. Just another option...
 
Here's one idea ,make a wood turning lathe first. Wood turning is just plain fun.

I have 17" Jet drill press . Who ever thought the cast iron for the base was so flexible. A drill press flopping around is not the end of the world, but the column flexing is a royal pain. Your suggestion for filling the tubes triggered a thought, what about using that foam in place they use in houses for crack sealing ?
 
Downwindtracker2 said:
Here's one idea ,make a wood turning lathe first. Wood turning is just plain fun.

I have 17" Jet drill press . Who ever thought the cast iron for the base was so flexible. A drill press flopping around is not the end of the world, but the column flexing is a royal pain. Your suggestion for filling the tubes triggered a thought, what about using that foam in place they use in houses for crack sealing ?
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I don't think that foam would add much rigidity or vibration damping, which are what I'm looking for
 
Why not do epoxy granite? It's not much more obnoxious than concrete, and has way better dampening properties than even cast iron (strength, too, but the steel handles that for either material)
 
barnbwt said:
Why not do epoxy granite? It's not much more obnoxious than concrete, and has way better dampening properties than even cast iron (strength, too, but the steel handles that for either material)
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You got a good recipe that isn't prohibitively expensive?
 
To be honest there will be nothing " cheap " about this, you will spend more then a new lathe and will end up with with a less accurate machine. .. I don't mean to rain on ur perade, what do you call accurate?

You could end up with a fairly OK machine if you went for broke and brought best of the best parts

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
 
Laytonnz said:
To be honest there will be nothing " cheap " about this, you will spend more then a new lathe and will end up with with a less accurate machine. .. I don't mean to rain on ur perade, what do you call accurate?

You could end up with a fairly OK machine if you went for broke and brought best of the best parts

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I expect no better than .005" overall accuracy. Although I don't really know what to expect.
 
I built the gingery lathe and after some modifications it cuts very accurately. My tailstock is generally within .001" to .002" of the headstock. With patience I can turn a part to the exact size needed. The the gingery lathe gets a bad rap for the bed flexing because it's built from aluminum and steel plate but I found it to be very ridged as long as you don't push it past its limits. Accuracy boils down to how tight all your parts mate together. That being said, building a lathe is a very labor intensive project with many hurdeles to jump through anproblems to be solved and I was following plans in a book!! I highly suggest finding some plans to build off of or build a semi working mock up out of wood and allthread first. If not it could become a very costly project that you'll probably never complete. It may not sound like it but I highly recommend building your own lathe, it was very enjoyable and rewarding and I may build a bigger one later on down the road. Sorry for the long post. Good luck
 
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