For setups like this a spindle lock is almost a must have. For indexing though you could either just do a simple indexing plate or hook up a stepper motor and encoder for digital indexing. I'd really like to see your own design/build for a DIY rotary table in the future :)
That's a great idea!! You really need to get some aluminum angled plates that are the same thickness as the rest of it in there to replace those flimsy shelf brackets. I bet that would help with the chatter you're getting out of your tooling. Great execution otherwise!!! I like the use of those linear rails. I had something similar in mind for upgrading/making a bunch of random power tools that are usually considered "close enough for government work" like the circular saw, drill press Z axis table to get rid of that table swinging in a radius on the drill press tube and some other little tidbits. They're generally not priced too high, if I remember correctly.
@@davidwillard7334 Why? As long as the slides and spindle can be locked up in some fashion, those shitty brackets are the only source of weakness left to flex in the system. As long as all slide ways are lockable.
Cheers, when i made this over a year and a half ago I never intended to cut anything other than wood and alu, so the brackets are next thing on the upgrade list. I would have changed them for this video but my whole state is in lockdown so I can't go out and get them made for me. The brackets do a pretty decent job, but when I start to mill steel, they will be the first thing I will change.
@@artisanmakes Do you reckon you could get pieces of aluminium, or steel, from ebay and cap screw some brackets together yourself? Sort of countersink cap screws along an edge to form the L shape and then screw diagonals to the edges for ridgidity. Not as good as TIG welding and machining square, but I would say a decent result would come your way. I mean you have the machining skills to make all the pieces and I think you could get the raw materials off ebay, worth a thought maybe?
@@artisanmakes Sorry mate, I'm a fitter and Turner and I cant help flexing the knowledge because I cant practice my trade anymore due to injury. So just trying to help a bit I guess.
@@davidwillard7334 Well I was trying to have an adult conversation here, but you're obviously incapable of that with the singular brain cell you have left.
Great vid! Thank you for sharing. This is so creative. I made a spindle locking mechanism for my mini lathe that mounts to the back of the headstock and indexes into a single gear tooth on the spindle with a spring loaded and lockable finger. I then replace this gear with different ones depending on if I want to index a part by 2,3,4,5, or even 7 divisions. I've yet to use this however in a job for dividing as I don't have a method of actually cutting these radial features. I started making a tool post mounted ER16 spindle to hold end mills and drills. However my lack of foresight made it so there wasn't much room for a part in the chuck. Hopefully with the cross slide extension mod I did recently and offsetting the ER16 spindle backward, away from the headstock spindle, I'll have more room for useful operations. With a rotation of the tool post, this ER 16 spindle will be able to work like a traditional rotary table or a tool for creating radial features on a part's OD when the top slide is set to 0°. Keep it up and happy making everyone.
Thought-provoking video, thank you. I could not work out how much space there is on the cross-slide, but a simple mod that would provide extra functionality would be to add the ability to rotate the attachment ninety degrees anticlockwise on the vertical axis. This would allow longer work to extend past the attachment, and be held between centres if necessary. By doing this, you could machine flats, splines, gear-teeth, drill holes etc. anywhere along the length of the work, limited only by the capacity of the lathe. Also, as others have already said, some form of indexing for the chuck would be a real "plus".
You can make a nice diy dividing option using the change gears and an expanding arbor to hold them that goes into the back of the spindle, you only need add something to lock into one of the gear teeth then. There's some examples of this around so hopefully the description is enough to find them
Ive been looking into this, the rear of the spindle seems to have a lot of run out on the inside. Ill have to look into a way to compensate for this before I can look into making a dividing solution.
Pretty neat idea. Look forward to seeing other projects with this setup. Single point screw cutting would be cool. Knurling with a V point, you could adjust the courseness by feed rate. So many opportunities. Thanks for sharing, Cheers
Not sure why you thought that method of fixturing the plate was dodgy. I've done the same thing quite a few times. In fact, I have a fixture plate that attaches to the mill table and pretty much the same way. Option B would be to use strap or toe clamps to hold it down. You can either aim for the slots, or put some sacrificial material or standoffs underneath it. If you want to stiffen those right angle joints, easiest way to do that is to drill and ream for some dowel pins. Ream one piece for a close slip fit and ream the other undersize for a press fit. The other suggestion to add angled aluminum plates that are solid gussets, instead of those cheesy stamp steel braces, is extremely good. Again, you can use dowel pins to hold things in a tight alignment.
If you bought a rotary table, you could mount in on the back of the lathe spindle, and use the worm gear to rotate the spindle, so you could turn a part, mill it, and even cut some gear teeth on it, all without taking the work piece out of the chuck. This is what I intend on doing.
Interesting idea. I'm looking at that and it's gave me an idea for building a makeshift milling machine that uses my T slotted cross slide as a table. I've contemplated making something to do this for years, but didn't get beyond thinking that I'd end up having to figure out a way to mount it off the back of the bed somehow. Before watching your video, mounting it directly to the ways didn't even cross my mind. I'm now thinking that I could build a removable milling column that slid onto the end of my hobby lathes bed (replacing the tailstock when needed) for when I have a little light milling work to do. I've got a vertical mill slide for the lathe, but the whole setup's about as ridged as an over ripe banana, so the finish is always god awful. Using a DIY vertical mill head on it would be directing the cutting forces into much more heavely supported parts of the carriage, rather than putting the force into trying to peal the carriage off the bed. Thanks for helping with the flash of inspiration.
Off the bat it is a very decent build. Though 3 problems are apparent, 1st your 90 degree brackets are a 2 piece support so IT Will have slack and once motor is on vibration will cause accuracy issues, best make some new ones out of same thickness aluminum or weld the plates together for better rigidity. 2nd is like you said the lathe chuck moving while trying to cut a simple solution is just use a C clamp with some hard wood to hold chuck in place till you make a Indexing jig. 3rd is that plate is right in the way of the part if you trying to mill anything longer, make a 2 to 4 inch hold in the plate for longer parts to pass through while milling.
7:43/7:46 - I believe it was Clough42 that made a nice stepper-motor-controlled drive thread for his lathe, which was synced up with an optical rotation sensor for the spindle, to allow for synchronization for threading and such. I’m sure pieces of that could be used for indexing, as well.
You do you dube but an observation I could make might be to buy a cheap box of parallels from ebay, or where ever you like, or I thought you could take the linear bearings apart and use the slides as a parallel to clamp oversize pieces like that to your mill in the future. Another trick you could use is one I used on a much bigger mill, but I think it would work on yours too. Make a section of T-slots out of a solid piece of steel (just pocket mill it out) around half the size of the mill bed and dowel and bolt it to the original part of the mill on the rear. You dont get a lot of table travel in that direction anymore, it does give more scope for parts held though.
Hi first of all: Great setup you build there! But I have some ideas that might improve your milling results. First of all add some proper brackets like other people mentioned. The secound problem is that you use a ball screw that might be driven backwards by the cutting forces if you don't lock it. If you will be using a servo or a stepper motor instead of the hand wheel this problem might be solved due to sufficient motor holding torque. Good Luck, you just got a new subscriber ;)
ah and did you think about building something like a index plate to your spindle? Might be coming in handy for milling hex and squares.. You might be able to use that disc as a break for the lathe.. You might have already done that I haven't seed all your videos yet..
Up until now I hadnt had to worry about a lock since the slide was held in place by the stepper and that was strong enough to do so. Since the board broke at the last minute during filming I just didn't have the time to machine up a lock. Still trying to get the stepper board working again. Cheers
@@artisanmakes 成功して何よりです アタッチメントを取り替えず作業出来るので作業効率上がると思いました。 Success is above all I thought that work efficiency would improve because I could work without replacing the attachment.
Pretty sure it's because your rotation of your lathe is spinning the same direction your end mills cutting edge is spinning. Reverse rotation of your lathe maybe?
The rotation of the lathe and spindle were actually in the opposite direction. I'm going to give it another try soon with a ball end mill, that set up has worked with 4 axis wood CNC machines so hopefully I'll get better results there
That is definitely not how adding a mill to a lathe should work. The point would be to bore holes or slots. Not turn the large on while milling the part. I'm surprised that didn't break the endmill. (Although I haven't finished yet. 😁)
0:59 Let me quess skrew and linear are same size. they not match xD and ballskrew nut clamp not factory made. its just someone made. no match for other brackets and your size on linears. and most machines linear rails are lifted up and skrew is lowered or they are same level but moving bed has those height diffs
We can only speculate, truth is I don't know. Linear rails are not things I have worked with a lot in the past, but when I worked with a friend to install similar rails, they were all the same height, and other videos on youtube have linear rail kits where the rails and ball screws were the same height and that was my assumption when I purchased this kit.
I have maybe an idea you can use on your machine for indexing parts on the lathe. and i would like to send you a drawing for use on a 80mm 3 Jaw Chuck if you up for it. I use this setup on my Lathe with good results. I build the part witd an rotary table on my mill, but you could easy make it with an Template or Dividers
Thing that i don't understand. Peoples like you how have skills, paying small chinese machine even you can get old heavy machines same price or even under that.. You can make things at steel if you have tools but if you have toys you only use soft materials
I don't care who ya are, if you've been assembling random things you've order for any length of time you're gonna have at least 10 of those things in a drawer or every once in a while you get one that's actually better than anything you can buy at a tool store. I've got 2 that are a #7 and a #8 torx that I have used the utter crap out of!!
I'm a wood worker venturing into metal machining and this channel is godsend. Great work and really helpful for me.
For setups like this a spindle lock is almost a must have. For indexing though you could either just do a simple indexing plate or hook up a stepper motor and encoder for digital indexing.
I'd really like to see your own design/build for a DIY rotary table in the future :)
A spindle lock + digital inclinometer.
That's a great idea!! You really need to get some aluminum angled plates that are the same thickness as the rest of it in there to replace those flimsy shelf brackets. I bet that would help with the chatter you're getting out of your tooling. Great execution otherwise!!! I like the use of those linear rails. I had something similar in mind for upgrading/making a bunch of random power tools that are usually considered "close enough for government work" like the circular saw, drill press Z axis table to get rid of that table swinging in a radius on the drill press tube and some other little tidbits. They're generally not priced too high, if I remember correctly.
@@davidwillard7334 Why? As long as the slides and spindle can be locked up in some fashion, those shitty brackets are the only source of weakness left to flex in the system. As long as all slide ways are lockable.
Cheers, when i made this over a year and a half ago I never intended to cut anything other than wood and alu, so the brackets are next thing on the upgrade list. I would have changed them for this video but my whole state is in lockdown so I can't go out and get them made for me. The brackets do a pretty decent job, but when I start to mill steel, they will be the first thing I will change.
@@artisanmakes Do you reckon you could get pieces of aluminium, or steel, from ebay and cap screw some brackets together yourself? Sort of countersink cap screws along an edge to form the L shape and then screw diagonals to the edges for ridgidity. Not as good as TIG welding and machining square, but I would say a decent result would come your way. I mean you have the machining skills to make all the pieces and I think you could get the raw materials off ebay, worth a thought maybe?
@@artisanmakes Sorry mate, I'm a fitter and Turner and I cant help flexing the knowledge because I cant practice my trade anymore due to injury. So just trying to help a bit I guess.
@@davidwillard7334 Well I was trying to have an adult conversation here, but you're obviously incapable of that with the singular brain cell you have left.
Great work as always. You've really been doing a lot of nice tools lately. We shared this video in our homemade tools forum this week :)
Great vid! Thank you for sharing. This is so creative.
I made a spindle locking mechanism for my mini lathe that mounts to the back of the headstock and indexes into a single gear tooth on the spindle with a spring loaded and lockable finger. I then replace this gear with different ones depending on if I want to index a part by 2,3,4,5, or even 7 divisions.
I've yet to use this however in a job for dividing as I don't have a method of actually cutting these radial features. I started making a tool post mounted ER16 spindle to hold end mills and drills. However my lack of foresight made it so there wasn't much room for a part in the chuck. Hopefully with the cross slide extension mod I did recently and offsetting the ER16 spindle backward, away from the headstock spindle, I'll have more room for useful operations. With a rotation of the tool post, this ER 16 spindle will be able to work like a traditional rotary table or a tool for creating radial features on a part's OD when the top slide is set to 0°.
Keep it up and happy making everyone.
Thought-provoking video, thank you. I could not work out how much space there is on the cross-slide, but a simple mod that would provide extra functionality would be to add the ability to rotate the attachment ninety degrees anticlockwise on the vertical axis. This would allow longer work to extend past the attachment, and be held between centres if necessary.
By doing this, you could machine flats, splines, gear-teeth, drill holes etc. anywhere along the length of the work, limited only by the capacity of the lathe.
Also, as others have already said, some form of indexing for the chuck would be a real "plus".
You can make a nice diy dividing option using the change gears and an expanding arbor to hold them that goes into the back of the spindle, you only need add something to lock into one of the gear teeth then. There's some examples of this around so hopefully the description is enough to find them
Ive been looking into this, the rear of the spindle seems to have a lot of run out on the inside. Ill have to look into a way to compensate for this before I can look into making a dividing solution.
Pretty neat idea. Look forward to seeing other projects with this setup. Single point screw cutting would be cool. Knurling with a V point, you could adjust the courseness by feed rate. So many opportunities.
Thanks for sharing,
Cheers
I hadn't thought about that, might be an opportunity to cut threads at full depth in one single pass. Cheers
Not sure why you thought that method of fixturing the plate was dodgy. I've done the same thing quite a few times. In fact, I have a fixture plate that attaches to the mill table and pretty much the same way.
Option B would be to use strap or toe clamps to hold it down. You can either aim for the slots, or put some sacrificial material or standoffs underneath it.
If you want to stiffen those right angle joints, easiest way to do that is to drill and ream for some dowel pins. Ream one piece for a close slip fit and ream the other undersize for a press fit.
The other suggestion to add angled aluminum plates that are solid gussets, instead of those cheesy stamp steel braces, is extremely good. Again, you can use dowel pins to hold things in a tight alignment.
Clever. I've been looking around to see who has done it and found your video. This is perfect for my lathe. Thanks for sharing.
If you bought a rotary table, you could mount in on the back of the lathe spindle, and use the worm gear to rotate the spindle, so you could turn a part, mill it, and even cut some gear teeth on it, all without taking the work piece out of the chuck. This is what I intend on doing.
Interesting idea.
I'm looking at that and it's gave me an idea for building a makeshift milling machine that uses my T slotted cross slide as a table.
I've contemplated making something to do this for years, but didn't get beyond thinking that I'd end up having to figure out a way to mount it off the back of the bed somehow.
Before watching your video, mounting it directly to the ways didn't even cross my mind. I'm now thinking that I could build a removable milling column that slid onto the end of my hobby lathes bed (replacing the tailstock when needed) for when I have a little light milling work to do.
I've got a vertical mill slide for the lathe, but the whole setup's about as ridged as an over ripe banana, so the finish is always god awful. Using a DIY vertical mill head on it would be directing the cutting forces into much more heavely supported parts of the carriage, rather than putting the force into trying to peal the carriage off the bed.
Thanks for helping with the flash of inspiration.
@@davidwillard7334 ???
Off the bat it is a very decent build. Though 3 problems are apparent, 1st your 90 degree brackets are a 2 piece support so IT Will have slack and once motor is on vibration will cause accuracy issues, best make some new ones out of same thickness aluminum or weld the plates together for better rigidity. 2nd is like you said the lathe chuck moving while trying to cut a simple solution is just use a C clamp with some hard wood to hold chuck in place till you make a Indexing jig. 3rd is that plate is right in the way of the part if you trying to mill anything longer, make a 2 to 4 inch hold in the plate for longer parts to pass through while milling.
Acompanhando seu trabalho
thank you so much for your videos, it is amazing what you can do with just a little. makes me appreciate what i have in my own shop a great deal more!
Mounting an angle grinder or dremmel on the cross slide or top slide might achieve something too.
7:43/7:46 - I believe it was Clough42 that made a nice stepper-motor-controlled drive thread for his lathe, which was synced up with an optical rotation sensor for the spindle, to allow for synchronization for threading and such. I’m sure pieces of that could be used for indexing, as well.
@@davidwillard7334 huh?
@@davidwillard7334 more capitalized letters does not give more clarity. :-P
You do you dube but an observation I could make might be to buy a cheap box of parallels from ebay, or where ever you like, or I thought you could take the linear bearings apart and use the slides as a parallel to clamp oversize pieces like that to your mill in the future. Another trick you could use is one I used on a much bigger mill, but I think it would work on yours too. Make a section of T-slots out of a solid piece of steel (just pocket mill it out) around half the size of the mill bed and dowel and bolt it to the original part of the mill on the rear. You dont get a lot of table travel in that direction anymore, it does give more scope for parts held though.
you can use that setup to cut a radius of whichever size your tooling allows for into the workpiece without worrying about chatter.
Hi first of all: Great setup you build there!
But I have some ideas that might improve your milling results. First of all add some proper brackets like other people mentioned. The secound problem is that you use a ball screw that might be driven backwards by the cutting forces if you don't lock it. If you will be using a servo or a stepper motor instead of the hand wheel this problem might be solved due to sufficient motor holding torque.
Good Luck, you just got a new subscriber ;)
ah and did you think about building something like a index plate to your spindle? Might be coming in handy for milling hex and squares.. You might be able to use that disc as a break for the lathe.. You might have already done that I haven't seed all your videos yet..
Up until now I hadnt had to worry about a lock since the slide was held in place by the stepper and that was strong enough to do so. Since the board broke at the last minute during filming I just didn't have the time to machine up a lock. Still trying to get the stepper board working again. Cheers
Nice modification mate
7:15 careful you don't ruin your chucks hitting together. Using that spindle motor as a tool post grinder is a pretty good idea
Indexed backplate?
Excelente 🦾, gracias por compartir conocimiento
Nice build, but it hate the screws you use. Please use socket screws pls
Just watched a guy mount a Makita router to his tool post using a cylinder welded to a flat bar
フライス盤に旋盤載せた方法が色々な事が出来ると思う
I think there are many ways to put a lathe on a milling machine.
Yes I've seen a few different styles, this one just worked with what I had. Cheers
@@artisanmakes
成功して何よりです
アタッチメントを取り替えず作業出来るので作業効率上がると思いました。
Success is above all
I thought that work efficiency would improve because I could work without replacing the attachment.
Pretty sure it's because your rotation of your lathe is spinning the same direction your end mills cutting edge is spinning. Reverse rotation of your lathe maybe?
The rotation of the lathe and spindle were actually in the opposite direction. I'm going to give it another try soon with a ball end mill, that set up has worked with 4 axis wood CNC machines so hopefully I'll get better results there
That is definitely not how adding a mill to a lathe should work. The point would be to bore holes or slots. Not turn the large on while milling the part. I'm surprised that didn't break the endmill. (Although I haven't finished yet. 😁)
Good job 👏
That small screwdriver triggers me. LOL. Great video though.
You mention the lathe/mill combos... Are those any good at all? I've always wondered!
Very useful !
Fantastic, what spindle motor are you using?
You could try parting with the Y Axis and see if that works on a mini Lathe
Thankyou for the suggestion
that is so awesome :)
How that Sherline lathe for turning steel Does it do deep cut or just shallow cuts
I'm impressed.
I still can't understand, what is better: a milling attachment for lathe or a rotary axis for mill?
Rotary attachment would be my conclusion, but a good one will not be cheap
0:59 Let me quess skrew and linear are same size. they not match xD and ballskrew nut clamp not factory made. its just someone made. no match for other brackets and your size on linears.
and most machines linear rails are lifted up and skrew is lowered or they are same level but moving bed has those height diffs
We can only speculate, truth is I don't know. Linear rails are not things I have worked with a lot in the past, but when I worked with a friend to install similar rails, they were all the same height, and other videos on youtube have linear rail kits where the rails and ball screws were the same height and that was my assumption when I purchased this kit.
I liked that a lot. Thanks
Thankyou
👍👍👍👍👍
I have maybe an idea you can use on your machine for indexing parts on the lathe. and i would like to send you a drawing for use on a 80mm 3 Jaw Chuck if you up for it. I use this setup on my Lathe with good results. I build the part witd an rotary table on my mill, but you could easy make it with an Template or Dividers
Is that homemade dykem blue? Gots a recipe pls?
Yes it is, its just an alcohol soluble dye mixed in denatured alcohol with shellac ua-cam.com/video/TjWJZJ_tB_Q/v-deo.html
Amazing man
Don't see a good justified use for this. I would like to see a vise to mill 80% lowers for AR15 & AR10 pow pow thingies
I don't really see why I'd do this if I had a proper milling machine.
I used It for a bit as a make shift indexer before I bought the dividing head
@@artisanmakes Ah, I see now. Did you consider building the Gingery dividing head?
I was considering it, but I got a good dead on a brown and Sharpe style dividing head So i went with that
@@artisanmakes Gotta love a good deal! We all need more of those.
Nevertheless that series appears to cater with some interesting projects.
Just machine a rotory table or go to my channel to see how I built mine. Best of luck
Thing that i don't understand. Peoples like you how have skills, paying small chinese machine even you can get old heavy machines same price or even under that.. You can make things at steel if you have tools but if you have toys you only use soft materials
No you can not get old machinery for the same price where I live. Maybe in North America or Europe but not in Australia
@@artisanmakesAnd what people don't understand is that space is important in Australia, especially in capital cities 😂
6:00 hell no!
HAHAHA what's that little green screwdriver???? Plz throw that away
Seems to do the job fine enough
I don't care who ya are, if you've been assembling random things you've order for any length of time you're gonna have at least 10 of those things in a drawer or every once in a while you get one that's actually better than anything you can buy at a tool store. I've got 2 that are a #7 and a #8 torx that I have used the utter crap out of!!
@@BIGWIGGLE223 same but they need to go lol
That is a terrible finish!!!!
Its not so good. I have seen people make it work with wood on 4 axis CNC mills, but I couldn't get it to work here in brass.
u dont want that ole thing, just sell it to me w/cross slide.