Myford Stand to floor mounting advice needed

Hello all. I am new to lathes and need some advice on mounting my newly acquired ML7 Myford lathe stand (not original Myford but very convincing) to the workshop floor. The floor is flat but not level concrete. The lathe is on a stand, which has been put on a 12mm thick plywood board, but the stand has a slight wobble at the moment. I want to get rid of this, although the stand not being level isn't necessarily a concern by itself.

Is it best to a) shim the stand off the plywood until level or b), change the wood for a flat steel plate? I will sort out getting the lathe itself set level on the stand later on, once the wobble has been eradicated. As the wall behind is wooden, I may well also add some small angle iron to come from the stand/under the drip tray extending to the wall as extra support.

Any advice much appreciated!!

the ply will tend to rock everytime you tread on it. I suggest setting a couple of bits of 4x2 on cement to give a firm standing.

I made the stand for my ML7 out of square tube, scrap from work. I carefully made it the same height as the Myford stand, and always finished up with backache after a prolonged turning session. Only when I lifted it up by 6" did the problem go away. I reckon the cross slide handle should be level with your navel. This may well mean you should raise up your stand, in which case I'd ditch the plywood and set some blocks or cut up concrete flags on sand/cement on the concrete to get it level and at the right height. Finally shim it with bits of steel. If there is any possibility of the stand rocking the whole thing will gyrate if you're turning something offset in the 4 jaw

Thanks chaps,. Here's current setup..

I would get 4 round headed coach bolts with nuts and big thick square washers. Drill a tight clearance hole for the coach bolt up through the plywood into the end of each leg of the side frames. Screw nut well down on coach bolt, say within 1/2" of its head, put washer on, push into hole. repeat fro the other three, Now holding the square under the heads and turning the nuts, the stand can be made to stand firmly on your concrete.

Frank

I cant see any reason to have the plywood when bolting to a concrete floor. Am I missing something?

I would get rid of the plywood, drill four holes into the concrete and dyna-bolt (or similar) the stand to the concrete.

Before tightening the bolts down, slip a feeler gauge under each of the four bolt down areas and if necessary, put shim under the stand to take up any gap between it and the concrete. This way, you are not twisting the stand when bolting it down, and hopefully avoiding twisting the actual lathe bed in turn.

Final levelling can be done with shims or raising blocks or whatever you want, directly between the lathe itself and the top surface of the stand.

Don't put a bracket to the wall of your workshop from the lathe stand. The wall will then reverberate all the noise and vibration of the lathe working and make it ten times worse.

My Super 7 is on the official stand and I have put adjustable machine feet through the foot brackets. My mill on the other hand is on an angle iron stand. I've used these feet from Axminster bolted to that stand and they work fine. I find it quite useful to have both machines set up level with the earth (let's not go down any other levelling road!).

HTH

Rod

OK, today I relocated the lathe and ditched the ply in favour of two lengths of 2x4" rectangular section steel. These bolt to the bottom of the lathe and then use rawl bolts through the floor as shown.

The lathe stand is much more stable on the floor, of course, but the lathe itself seems to rock on the stand still. The stand is not original Myford although is very convincing, but the feet which go between the lathe and the drip tray seem to flex the sheet metal on the drip tray top. I am hoping a flat steel plate to go under the drip tray on the roof of the inside (probably 3mm thick?) will cure this? Any suggestions?

I would bolt a couple of angle irons or some thick flat bars underneath the myford feet bolts inside the cabinet, go front to back and add some extra bolts as near to each end of these as possible.

You need to get the fixing as near to the corner of the cabinet as you can, to get rid of the flex in the top sheet.

Phil

Much better!!