PICTURES -- lathe on cart in seller's garage

Good luck with it and tell us how it worked out in the end.

Be careful of those casters -- especially at the headstock end. If they rotate in towards the center too much things could topple. I don't see them being mounted far enough outboard from under the weight of the headstock and motor.

Can you lock the casters to always be straight ahead?

Also -- I noticed one of the images (04-*) taking more time than I expected to download, so I saved it and opened it with xv. That is one *big* image.

Enjoy, DoN.

No, they are rather wide. The cart is 30 inches wide and the casters are about 24 inches apart. Considering that the center of gravity is, perhaps, around 24-30 inches, also, it should be stable enough to move around slowly.

Not right now, now, but all I need to do is winch it UP on trailer (with trailer slightly sloping up) and winch it down. Then it will stay on flat surface while I clean it up and decide with to do with it.

For the future I will add a casters lock, but now it is not necessary.

xv is not good enough for images of this size. I would try gimp. I recently transitioned from xv to gimp for photo editing.

Also, I made a chuck key from a 1/2" Proto socket extension and a 3/8" round rod today. The proto socket extension was surprisingly difficult to drill. A drill bit dulled right away.

Saved approximately $22

The main thing is what happens when both casters under the headstock swing in towards each other. How wide is the support base when that happens?

Can you add some cross-beams near the casters but clear of the swing and thick enough so they almost touch the floor (say 1/4" clearance) and which stick out beyond the sides of the cart to catch it if it starts to tip? (Be *sure* that everyone knows to not try to catch it by hand if it starts to tip -- just get out of the way *quickly*.

Again -- watch what happens when the contact point of the casters swings in towards the other caster.

"xv" is not satisfactory for *editing* one of this size, but is good enough for a quick look at it, and the 'i' command (info) will tell me what the dimensions of the image are as well. And the "quick" is the key word there -- it loads a lot quicker than the GIMP does. And yes, I use the GIMP for serious editing of images. Among other things, it does not reduce the size unless I *ask* it to do so. :-)

A *good* socket extension is forged steel, and *should* be tough. However, you could have used a *cheap* extension to make the chuck key, and kept the Proto for serious work.

Or -- you could have made the chuck key with your mill and a square collet block. Just chuck the body in the collet block with an appropriate sized collet, then mount the collet block in the milling vise with one end lining up with the edge, then mill across the end, flip it 90 degrees and re-mount in the vise, do it again until you get the end square. Then measure the size of the square, subtract from it the size of the square socket in the chuck, divide the difference by two, and go back to the mill. Crank the knee up by the calculated value, and repeat the milling of all four sides.

You can also use the same trick with a hex collet block to make either hex or three sided ends (heads or bits) on your workpiece.

Enjoy, DoN.

Probably around 21 inches. Really plenty for low center of gravity lathe.

I can, but then it would not go well on ramps.

This is a valid point,. but less important for a lathe compared to something taller.

I used gimp for about 10+ years, but now I am moving towards gimp. It does exactly what I want and I can also script it.

I have a few more of these protos, already.

Yep, I did that one to make a hex. It was fun.

Hmm ... I don't know about *your* lathe, but I would consider mine (a Clausing 5418 -- 12x24") to be a *high* center of gravity. The bed alone weighs more than the entire set of pedestals (unless the drawers are filled to the top with tooling), and the weight of the headstock, even with a belt driven one, let alone with your gearhead one) shifts the center of gravity up to somewhere near the bottom of the bed casting at best -- not even as far down as the bottom of the feet in the chip pan.

Lathes *love* to topple over forwards or backwards when being moved. Anything which can move the contact points outside the base of the lathe and *keep* them there will help control it. If you go back through the archives here you will find stories of lathes which toppled forwards, breaking the handwheels and control levers, and sometimes damaging the people who were moving them.

Hmm ... don't you mean that you used 'xv' for about 10+ years? I've been using it for at least fifteen years.

And I agree that "the GIMP" is the choice when *editing* images. But "xv" is nice for flipping through a directory full of images. Turn on the "visual schnauzer" (CTRL-V while the cursor is in an image or the splash screen) click the "update" button at the bottom of the screen, and you will get thumbnails of every image in that directory which you have access permissions for. You can select, delete, and relocate the images to other directories using the mouse. Nice when wading through a bunch of images to cull out the bad ones prior to making a web page with them.

But for *modifying* them -- "the GIMP" is the tool of choice.

O.K. But perhaps some of the rest of us would like those. :-)

Indeed so. And a lot quicker setup than bolting a dividing head to the mill's table.

Enjoy, DoN.