Hi everybody, I thought I would share my current project which is a cnc benchtop lathe. After seeing the great work by other members and their custom machine projects I was motivated to try and build myself a nice little benchtop lathe. I already have a import 9x20 and I really have no interest in converting it. I wanted to just start fresh.:idea:
The lathe is a work in progress, I started on it about a month ago.
I adapted a mini lathe spindle and a mini mill spindle base to form the headstock for this project. Nice cast iron parts. I discarded the mini lathe plastic gear drive and built a new belt drive using a HTD primary and dual 3mm polyflex to drive the spindle. It will use a mini mill dc motor with a variable speed DC controller. The headstock is mounted through the bed with four studs. It's very solid.
The bed is made from 1" thick ground steel with 1/2" thick sides and boxed in underneath by welding. The bed is 5" wide and 24" long.
I mounted the z axis rails(Hiwin 15mm) today. I have them nice and parallel at around .0002" variance.
The tailstock will also be mounted to the z-axis rails on 2 blocks. The threaded holes in the bed are for locking the tailstock in place.
As shown in the pics it weighs about 100lbs right now. I'll be making a turret toolchanger. I figure the little feller will come in at around 150+lbs when done. So it'll be fairly easy to move around.
Well here are a few pics of my progress.
Steve