Well Bernd, I have a fine tradition of hacking perfectly good gun parts with a file, so why should the mill and lathe be any different?
I'll can tell you a very sad tale about a perfectly good Delta Elite during a beavertail safety installation that would make you puke. Fortunately, a good friend of a good friend named Ted Yost took her in and fixed her all up better than I could have ever imagined. So I guess that one turned out well.
I've got a Grizzly G3103 mill and their G0609 10"x23" lathe, Eric. In fact, I just came in from cleaning up a 4" square of 1" steel plate that is supposed to become a new compound slide mount for the my lathe. The stocker is a bit flimsy and only uses two bolts to hold it to the carriage slide. It's only about a half inch thick, and is basically a lopped off circle, so there isn't a whole lot of bearing area.
I've done a few minor mods, mostly to the lathe. Except for facing my backplate to accept a 6-jaw chuck, everything else has been mostly nuts and bolts kind of stuff, like modifying the tailstock to give me a bit more travel, that sort of thing. Oh, and I made a draw bar for an ER32 collet chuck. I'd still like to get few more things done to the lathe before I get into anything more challenging. I've installed a QCTP which helped stiffen up the compound carriage. I'd like to install a VFD on both the lathe and the mill.
Anywho, thanks for the greeting, guys. You can be sure I'll be lurking around watching you guys for inspiration. Lots and lots of cool stuff here!
-Matt
