Are there any attachments for lathes that would allow me to use a lathe as a poor man's mill?
i- posted
18 years ago
Are there any attachments for lathes that would allow me to use a lathe as a poor man's mill?
i
Yes there are. They are called milling attachements. They are very limited in what they can do however. For an example look at
Lane
Milling adapters for lathes are commonly avialable on eBay for Atlas and other brands of lathes. I picked up one in like new condition (for a 12" Atlas) about a year ago for roughly $200. This price included the Atlas milling collet and drawbar.
Harry C.
Thanks... I will look out for one...
i
Or you can make one. I milled a toolpost for a 10" Atlas out of a block of steel, using only a Logan lathe with Phase II QC toolholder. The QC toolholder itself makes a limited-range milling attachment. With some engenuity the range can be expanded. An angle block with a small vice attached is a good start, also.
I always thought the Metal Lathe Accessories one was nice:
Jim
I do not know yet if this attachment will fit my lathe -- I have to clean it up and take pictures and measurements -- but something like that would be awfully nice. And the price is tolerable.
i
I actually purchased a milling attachment, new, for my 9" SB model A at one time. This was before SB prices got outta-hand.
One thing you should know about milling attachments is, you can really only do very, very light work with them. Cuts are figured in terms of thousants, not tens of thousanths for the most part. The rigidity just isn't there.
Also milling attachments tend to go for Big Money (tm) for some reason. So if you haunt ebay you might get scared off.
Still they're handy if you only have a lathe. I actually purchased a nice Sloan and Chace hoizontal milling machine for less than I paid for the milling attachment. This was around the time that I had upgraded to a 10" SB so there was never any interest in buying a milling attachment for that.
The small, antique horizontal allowed about ten times the work overall that the milling attachment did. Heavier cuts, longer table travels. That sort of thing.
Jim
And why in the world does he *want* one? He just got a beautiful Clausing mill which will run rings around any such adaptor.
Enjoy, DoN.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Umm, carve squares you mean?
;o)
Tim
-- "California is the breakfast state: fruits, nuts and flakes." Website:
The acquisition of tooling is it's own reward. Has nothing to do with logic, else we'd just carry our projects down to the local job-shop and pay the hourly rate for machining (which would be cheaper than the acquisition cost of our tools).
But it's usually tooling which we believe will expand our mastery of the physical universe by adding some new capability to our arsenal.
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