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vtsteam:
One more thing -- forgot to mention. Besides its other essential components of a rotating arbor and a set of slides, a machinist's lathe also has a fixed bed way -- and this supports the tailstock, which becomes a fixed reference point. That's actually an important piece. A fixed extension of the headstock/rotating arbor.

The equivalent in a typical horizontal mill is the overarm!. If you attach a tailstock type barrel and adjustable plunger and center to a horizontal mill overarm, you have a lathe. In the case of the overarm -- this fixing reference beam slides in and out of the headstock, as opposed to the tailstock of a lathe sliding over the bed ways. But it can serve the same function. In fact a fixed overarm-- not necessarily circular in cross section, except at the attachment point, with a sliding, true tailstock could be made as an accessory to a horizontal mill if desired. I believe David Urwick designed a combination machine using an inverted bed ways, with a circular section, and a novel triangular sliding gib key. His work should be familiar to British model engineers, as he wrote extensively on this and other very interesting creations in the field of hot air engines in Model Engineer..

In the Gingery horizontal mill, there is no overarm, there is instead a fixed lathe style way. An "underarm" if you want to think of it that way. Either of these perform the same stationary reference function that a lathe bed way does.

vtsteam:
One more thing I also forgot to mention -- the lathe analogue for the bed ways and tailstock on a horizontal mill would be an overarm with tailstock type fitting and center. Ideally a usable taper which you could mount things in other than just a center. But I forgot to mention the analoge for a lathe's tool holder.

That could be any conventional type of lathe tool holder mounted to the horizontal mill's sliding table. That's quite similar to the way it is handled on some lathe boring table set ups.

In fact if someone had very reduced floor space, and for that reason alone, was considering a mini lathe of limited capacity between centers, it might be possible to acquire at small cost a used horizontal mill of comparatively husky proportions, but reasonably small footprint, which could be adapted into a very strong lathe -- capable of doing good heavy cuts, with a big faceplate capacity. And usable as a mill as well.

6" of vertical travel on a horizontal mill translates into a 12" facing capacity as a lathe.

vtsteam:
Back to the Gingery lathe milling attachment......

This is the clamping piece that goes over the vertical slide. The semi-circular channel will will form a clamping bore and eventually accept any of the lathe's cast on arbors and work holding attachments. The original purpose here is to accept a rotary table for milling the Tesla disk slots which was the original motivation for this particular project.

Here the clamping piece is being surfaced.

vtsteam:
Here the clamping block has been attached to the vertical slide, and the through hole is being enlarged. Afterwards it will be bored to exact size with the boring bar.

The vertical slide ways have been bolted to the milling table. This drilling operation again takes advantage of the fact that the workpiece is in its proper finished working position, and being driven along the ways to insure that the hole is parallel with the lathe ways, rather than drilling and fabricating from measurements and measured set-ups.

vtsteam:
And here is the basic vertical milling attachment put together and ready to fly cut a surface -- probably as a test -- can't quite remember what that workpiece was for!

Notice that the lathe's faceplate is being used as a vertical milling table, and that the lathe's 2 jaw chuck is bolted to that as a work holder. The milling spindle has replaced the faceplate arbor in the headstock. The lathe is now backwards, in a sense!

We are now at the stage where we are able to take advantage of interchangeable parts, and have built up a library of useful and reusable patterns to further extend this machine, or build others.

While it looks finished in this photo, the faceplate/milling table is still not a rotary table -- there isn't a means of rotating it yet, but it can be clamped and used to mill parts on a large flat surface -- larger than the horizontal milling table, at this point.

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