Well Ken, I got the plans from a german site. I don't remember if the link is in adobe's thread or not but it is on the zone somewhere, so for the most part I used those plans. I found out after looking at them that some of the fits were interference fits so I knew that that was not going to work very well. I started editing some of the parts and it was starting to take longer to fix the problems than I wanted to spend on it(the parts were converted from acis (*.sat) files) So I kind of trashed the whole idea of fixing the problems and started fresh, but I printed all of the converted files as a guide, and as far as the center height, well I just built it. My boss has a jet lathe I don't know the actual size but I think its around 15 x 60 I measured it once and it was about 3" from the top of the cross slide to the center of the chuck, I also measured a harbor freight one(one of the mini's) and it also was almost 3" so I am assuming that as long as it is less than 3" it should be good to go. What I will do when my CFO (wife) allows me to spend some more money(I built a cnc router spent about 4,000 on that) I am going to buy a lathe. Even though I was hired as an IT guy I run the cnc milling machine most of the time at work and I also run it at night for more money. When I get a lathe I will just mill out a spacer to go under the indexer to make it the right height and then my plan is to drill and tap the cross slide and bolt it down.