Pimping the mini-lathe

Thanks for checking that.

Good spotting. I didn't even realise I had. Got lucky that I didn't fry it.
Mark

when i get time to re do my lathe i think this will be a good post to keep track of for idea's with mine. the mini i have is a little bit bigger being a 9" x 21 but still a small machine like this one. the only thing i was thinking about doing differently was the drive motor. i was thinking a servo would be easier than a VFD ? i have seen people who have done the servo drive and were happy with the torque they were able to get going that way. the only thing i don't like despite being a small lathe is the 20 mm spindle bore on mine. it would be nice if that part of the machine was a bit bigger but getting into that might end up being more trouble than it's worth for a small conversion.

any kind of cnc conversion on these little lathes make them much more useful no doubt. i hated mine when it was just all manual.

Thanks for the feedback. Do you have a link to your machine as it is now?

no i don't have anything on that one on here just the other money pit am trying to finish it started as a plasma table but ended up as a gantry mill. the 9 x 21 was actually a combo machine with the mini mill attachment and the milling head is on the gantry machine at the moment.

i did try to put the big machine back together after i did some E.G. casting but i have to do some clean up for the ball screw clearance on the long axis. the material sagged a little bit and i had very little clearance to begin with so i have to take that back apart and knock the high spots off with a concrete grinding wheel to fix things.

to much other stuff going on in the summer time to have a lot of time for working on machines it seems.

I know what you mean. It is much nicer to go paddling with my kayak than to do wiring.

I also dabbled in E/G. I would kind of like to make a little surface grinder the size of a LIP 515 out of E/G.

when i did my casting i ended up with about 2100 lbs of E.G. which took about 27 gallons of epoxy. cost a lot more than i thought it would did exactly what i wanted but did not expect it to take as much E.G. that it did makes for a nice machine base but can get costly pretty fast.

i wish i was able to relax on the river doing some boating but my life seems to be all work and no play. to busy playing grounds keeper, mechanic and general handy man lately

I'd sure like to see some pictures of that E/G base. How did you mix, pour, degass and vibrate it?