Help: bed casting

What are you planning to do about the rack and leadscrew?

Likely the most practical way to do this is to get a second one of the lathes and use it to provide the additional bed and rack components. You'd get extra length past it's stated size since you can include the tailstock area and possibly some of the head area.

You could probably machine and dowel pin the bed sections together for alignment and then mount the entire assembly onto a big piece of steel channel stock to provide a new base plate and additional support. You'd still have to figure out the leadscrew issue. You'd also have extra parts for anything you broke later at less cost than purchasing replacement parts.

You could of course find a suitably sized used lathe with a larger swing and more rigidity for a similar price.

Pete C.

How about a weldment? Use an I beam as a base?

Earth.

Have you checked any of the Yahoo mini lathe groups? I believe there's one dedicated just to that...

Earth.

Here's a few you might want to look at:

Interesting, the picture on the home page of that last group seems to be exactly what I suggested in my previous reply. I might actually have a clue ;)

Pete C.