Gallery, Projects and General > The Design Shop

Lathe to mill conversion

(1/1)

ibuildstuff4u:
I was in the shop tonight staring at my CNC lathe and started thinking about an easy way to convert it to a CNC mill until I get the funds to build a dedicated mill.

Grizzly is selling a milling attachment for the 9X20 lathe for $159.00 which would give me a Y travel of 4 5/8"
I can pull off my tool changer by simply removing two bolts and one wire connector and then bolt on the milling attachment.  Add a stepper motor to the milling attachment and wire it so you can just plug it into the tool changer connector. 

Then set up a profile in Mach 3 Mill to use the Z, X and now new Y axis as a milling machine and make chips!

My lathe already has three stepper drives and could easily run the new Y axis by just changing the driver profile.  The total project cost would be around $225.00 for the milling attachment and extra stepper motor.  The travels wouldn't be the best and I would have to be careful on the amount of weight I add to the X axis, but I think it would work.

What do you think?

Dale P.

jamoni:
I've run a very similar setup on my little chinese manual lathe.
Works fine. You're milling area is very limited, but within that limitation it was satisfactory.

Navigation

[0] Message Index