Hello,
I would like some critiques of a cnc lathe I'm going to attempt to build.
The general idea is:
I take the head stock from a hardinge lathe, then mount a Taig cross slide for a mill and then gang tool the whole thing.
What it's for making:
Body jewelry out of stainless steel and titanium. The work area on this machine needs only be 2x2 inches. I'm not expecting to take really heavy cuts. I hand make everything now on a manual 9 inch south bend and it takes me about an hour to make 2-3 pieces. So if I can improve that I'm happy!
What I expect:
Medium to light cuts in difficult metals, a 5-7 piece gang tooling setup up (probably a copy of an omni turn gang holder) very good finish quality on light cuts and accuracy around .005 would be fine.
What I have:
hardinge headstock
the Taig cross slide with 400 once stepper motors
a lot of carbide tooling
As much steel box tubing as I want.
Access to a friend that is really good with a TIG welder, and owes me
Some pictures of what I'm thinking about doing.
Basically I want to take a 6x2x.3125 thick piece of steel box tubing, and weld the headstock directly to it. Then down further screw a piece of steel to hold the Taig in place. I want to weld some posts in place in the tube to keep the steel from separating and twisting. Then most likely fill it with concrete or epoxy. The last step will be mounting pieces of ground tool steel to the table of the Taig and setting my tooling up on it.
http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q...t=DSCF4896.jpg
http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q...t=DSCF4898.jpg
http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q...t=DSCF4901.jpg
This last picture just shows the factory mount for the Taig.
http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q...t=DSCF4899.jpg
My questions,
Do you think this is possible? Such as to obtain my goals
Do you think that welding is the best way to hold the head stock in place?
Would I be better served to somehow put pins in the bottom of the headstock and screw it to some sort of granite base?
Do you think this machine will twist or vibrate too much?