Micro Metal Lathe.
Originally, I had planned to contruct a Gingery designed metal lathe. The reasons for doing so were :
a. Cost (ie. cheap).
b. Better specifications than what I could afford.
c. I like doing things myself.
We made a start at the lathe, made patterns and cast the bed and base blocks, as well as some lost foam trials
for the cross-slide.
Anyway, I also have a business and a day job. Due to things becoming time restricted, My business partner and
I decide that it would make more sense to just buy a lathe. We did look at a number of used metal lathes of
proper size, but unfortunately, nothing turned up in the time frame that we had.
So, we bought a micro lathe from ebay.
Lathe Accessories.
So far, I have added an overhead incandescent light and a homemade cooland pump. The reason for using
incandescnet over flourescent is that fouoro's can upset the view of the spinning workpiece. I have purchased
commercial TCT tooling, and a tail chuck for drilling. I love the lathe because you can almost make all
your own accessories for it! The actual hose for the coolant pump came from an old parts washer at work that
was no longer required so I borrowed the hose, turned up an adadptor for it, and viola!