Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Mill -> Lathe

On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Elliot Burke wrote:

> Tom Benedict wrote:
> >
> > I've got a Taig CNC mill with the Microproto controller. I got EMC
> > working fine with three axes (I'm having little to no luck getting the
> > fourth axis working, but that's neither here nor there.)
> >
> > Last night, just for grins, I turned the mill head 90 degrees, mounted a
> > lathe toolpost on my mill bed, and brought the spindle down until it was
> > level with the lathe tool. In effect I made my mill into a poor-man's CNC
> > lathe.
>
> Why did you rotate the head 90°?
>
> I do lathe work in the mill using the normal mill head orientation,
> just move the z axis up and down to correspond to lathe x axis.
>
> No tailstock, of course.

Honestly, I think that would be a better setup for a lot of reasons, one
of which is you'd get the entire mill bed to position tools on.

Hmmmm!!

I think the reason I swung the head 90 degrees is I was doing this as a
way to test the concept before mounting my lathe directly on the mill bed.
The lathe-on-mill was the way I first approached this, mentally, so I
think I got stuck in that rut.

I've got some projects I'd like to do that would pretty much require a
tailstock (roughly 3/8" diameter over about 7" of length). But I've also
got some projects that would only need face milling, so I think pointing
it down like you said would work out better for that.

Thanks!

Tom