New member

G'day Bob Gitsham from Adelaide, South Australia. i have just joined this forum last night. I'm a retired marine engineer. My first qualification was fitter turner / toolmaker, I added Hydraulics fitter, specialist welder and finally marine engineer

After retiring I realised I missed the work of high quality machining and fitting so after much discussion with friends and arguments with "she who must be obeyed", I and against her wishes I bought a lath

My new lathe is a LD 1216 Still getting the hang of it, but so far so good. I also want a mill but do not have the room. So am thinking of building a vertical spindle milling attachment for the lathe. Interested if anyone has any info on such a project..

Welcome Bob. That LD1216 is a beast! Taiwanese lathes have a good reputation - please let us know how you get on with it.

I'm sure someone more knowledgable than me will be along to comment on vertical milling attachments.

Cheers,

Dave

Welcome to the forum. My 14"x40" Taiwanese lathe came out of the same factory, very few problems and now over 20 years old and used a lot. I have made a new beefed up cross slide with tee slots for rear mounted part off tool post. I considered the original cross slide the lathes weak point.

G'day Dave, A beast you say. A little on teh small size for my liking but it will do. I had wanted to get the next size up 13"swing with a gap and 24"long but I just don't have the room. The 1216 is the largest I can fit in my garage and still get the car in, with no room to expand.

So the answer is to build a vertical spindle milling attachment that will clamp to the bed after removing the chuck, and replacing it with a 6" pulley and a belt drive to the spindle then I'll have all 12 speeds available from the headstock gearbox.

A bit disappointing that the cross slide doesn't have "T"slots, and it's not really thick enough to risk cutting them. So my plan is to bolt a 1/2 "thick plate to the top of the cross slide with countersunk socket head cap bolts and have the plate predrilled with a series of drilled and tapped 12mm holes in a grid, this should allow me to bolt anything down that I need to.

Welcome to the forum Bob, I hope you negotiate domestic harmony again by making some useful gadgets - see another recent thread

Neil

G'day Chris, good to hear that you lathe is still going strong after 20 years, I hope mine does too but I doubt if I'll last that long.

Thanks Neil, Not sure what other recent thread you refer too. But yes it's all good now. I've just got to find the time to get into the workshop and actually make something. My head is full of ideas, but no time to do them.