Making A Lathe Milling Attachment | Lathe Mill Combo Mod 

I'm a wood worker venturing into metal machining and this channel is godsend. Great work and really helpful for me.

Great work as always. You've really been doing a lot of nice tools lately. We shared this video in our homemade tools forum this week :)

thank you so much for your videos, it is amazing what you can do with just a little. makes me appreciate what i have in my own shop a great deal more!

Great vid! Thank you for sharing. This is so creative. I made a spindle locking mechanism for my mini lathe that mounts to the back of the headstock and indexes into a single gear tooth on the spindle with a spring loaded and lockable finger. I then replace this gear with different ones depending on if I want to index a part by 2,3,4,5, or even 7 divisions. I've yet to use this however in a job for dividing as I don't have a method of actually cutting these radial features. I started making a tool post mounted ER16 spindle to hold end mills and drills. However my lack of foresight made it so there wasn't much room for a part in the chuck. Hopefully with the cross slide extension mod I did recently and offsetting the ER16 spindle backward, away from the headstock spindle, I'll have more room for useful operations. With a rotation of the tool post, this ER 16 spindle will be able to work like a traditional rotary table or a tool for creating radial features on a part's OD when the top slide is set to 0°. Keep it up and happy making everyone.

For setups like this a spindle lock is almost a must have. For indexing though you could either just do a simple indexing plate or hook up a stepper motor and encoder for digital indexing. I'd really like to see your own design/build for a DIY rotary table in the future :)

Clever. I've been looking around to see who has done it and found your video. This is perfect for my lathe. Thanks for sharing.

That's a great idea!! You really need to get some aluminum angled plates that are the same thickness as the rest of it in there to replace those flimsy shelf brackets. I bet that would help with the chatter you're getting out of your tooling. Great execution otherwise!!! I like the use of those linear rails. I had something similar in mind for upgrading/making a bunch of random power tools that are usually considered "close enough for government work" like the circular saw, drill press Z axis table to get rid of that table swinging in a radius on the drill press tube and some other little tidbits. They're generally not priced too high, if I remember correctly.

Thought-provoking video, thank you. I could not work out how much space there is on the cross-slide, but a simple mod that would provide extra functionality would be to add the ability to rotate the attachment ninety degrees anticlockwise on the vertical axis. This would allow longer work to extend past the attachment, and be held between centres if necessary. By doing this, you could machine flats, splines, gear-teeth, drill holes etc. anywhere along the length of the work, limited only by the capacity of the lathe. Also, as others have already said, some form of indexing for the chuck would be a real "plus".

Acompanhando seu trabalho

Not sure why you thought that method of fixturing the plate was dodgy. I've done the same thing quite a few times. In fact, I have a fixture plate that attaches to the mill table and pretty much the same way. Option B would be to use strap or toe clamps to hold it down. You can either aim for the slots, or put some sacrificial material or standoffs underneath it. If you want to stiffen those right angle joints, easiest way to do that is to drill and ream for some dowel pins. Ream one piece for a close slip fit and ream the other undersize for a press fit. The other suggestion to add angled aluminum plates that are solid gussets, instead of those cheesy stamp steel braces, is extremely good. Again, you can use dowel pins to hold things in a tight alignment.

Excelente 🦾, gracias por compartir conocimiento

Good job 👏

Very useful !

Pretty neat idea. Look forward to seeing other projects with this setup. Single point screw cutting would be cool. Knurling with a V point, you could adjust the courseness by feed rate. So many opportunities. Thanks for sharing, Cheers

that is so awesome :)

You can make a nice diy dividing option using the change gears and an expanding arbor to hold them that goes into the back of the spindle, you only need add something to lock into one of the gear teeth then. There's some examples of this around so hopefully the description is enough to find them

Interesting idea. I'm looking at that and it's gave me an idea for building a makeshift milling machine that uses my T slotted cross slide as a table. I've contemplated making something to do this for years, but didn't get beyond thinking that I'd end up having to figure out a way to mount it off the back of the bed somehow. Before watching your video, mounting it directly to the ways didn't even cross my mind. I'm now thinking that I could build a removable milling column that slid onto the end of my hobby lathes bed (replacing the tailstock when needed) for when I have a little light milling work to do. I've got a vertical mill slide for the lathe, but the whole setup's about as ridged as an over ripe banana, so the finish is always god awful. Using a DIY vertical mill head on it would be directing the cutting forces into much more heavely supported parts of the carriage, rather than putting the force into trying to peal the carriage off the bed. Thanks for helping with the flash of inspiration.

Nice modification mate

Off the bat it is a very decent build. Though 3 problems are apparent, 1st your 90 degree brackets are a 2 piece support so IT Will have slack and once motor is on vibration will cause accuracy issues, best make some new ones out of same thickness aluminum or weld the plates together for better rigidity. 2nd is like you said the lathe chuck moving while trying to cut a simple solution is just use a C clamp with some hard wood to hold chuck in place till you make a Indexing jig. 3rd is that plate is right in the way of the part if you trying to mill anything longer, make a 2 to 4 inch hold in the plate for longer parts to pass through while milling.

How that Sherline lathe for turning steel Does it do deep cut or just shallow cuts

👍👍👍👍👍

You do you dube but an observation I could make might be to buy a cheap box of parallels from ebay, or where ever you like, or I thought you could take the linear bearings apart and use the slides as a parallel to clamp oversize pieces like that to your mill in the future. Another trick you could use is one I used on a much bigger mill, but I think it would work on yours too. Make a section of T-slots out of a solid piece of steel (just pocket mill it out) around half the size of the mill bed and dowel and bolt it to the original part of the mill on the rear. You dont get a lot of table travel in that direction anymore, it does give more scope for parts held though.

Hi first of all: Great setup you build there! But I have some ideas that might improve your milling results. First of all add some proper brackets like other people mentioned. The secound problem is that you use a ball screw that might be driven backwards by the cutting forces if you don't lock it. If you will be using a servo or a stepper motor instead of the hand wheel this problem might be solved due to sufficient motor holding torque. Good Luck, you just got a new subscriber ;)

If you bought a rotary table, you could mount in on the back of the lathe spindle, and use the worm gear to rotate the spindle, so you could turn a part, mill it, and even cut some gear teeth on it, all without taking the work piece out of the chuck. This is what I intend on doing.

Indexed backplate?

Fantastic, what spindle motor are you using?

you can use that setup to cut a radius of whichever size your tooling allows for into the workpiece without worrying about chatter.

Mounting an angle grinder or dremmel on the cross slide or top slide might achieve something too.

I liked that a lot. Thanks

I'm impressed.

7:43/7:46 - I believe it was Clough42 that made a nice stepper-motor-controlled drive thread for his lathe, which was synced up with an optical rotation sensor for the spindle, to allow for synchronization for threading and such. I’m sure pieces of that could be used for indexing, as well.

7:15 careful you don't ruin your chucks hitting together. Using that spindle motor as a tool post grinder is a pretty good idea

You mention the lathe/mill combos... Are those any good at all? I've always wondered!

Amazing man

フライス盤に旋盤載せた方法が色々な事が出来ると思う I think there are many ways to put a lathe on a milling machine.

I still can't understand, what is better: a milling attachment for lathe or a rotary axis for mill?

That small screwdriver triggers me. LOL. Great video though.

Nice build, but it hate the screws you use. Please use socket screws pls

Pretty sure it's because your rotation of your lathe is spinning the same direction your end mills cutting edge is spinning. Reverse rotation of your lathe maybe?

Is that homemade dykem blue? Gots a recipe pls?

You could try parting with the Y Axis and see if that works on a mini Lathe

Just watched a guy mount a Makita router to his tool post using a cylinder welded to a flat bar

I have maybe an idea you can use on your machine for indexing parts on the lathe. and i would like to send you a drawing for use on a 80mm 3 Jaw Chuck if you up for it. I use this setup on my Lathe with good results. I build the part witd an rotary table on my mill, but you could easy make it with an Template or Dividers

0:59 Let me quess skrew and linear are same size. they not match xD and ballskrew nut clamp not factory made. its just someone made. no match for other brackets and your size on linears. and most machines linear rails are lifted up and skrew is lowered or they are same level but moving bed has those height diffs

That is definitely not how adding a mill to a lathe should work. The point would be to bore holes or slots. Not turn the large on while milling the part. I'm surprised that didn't break the endmill. (Although I haven't finished yet. 😁)

Don't see a good justified use for this. I would like to see a vise to mill 80% lowers for AR15 & AR10 pow pow thingies

Just machine a rotory table or go to my channel to see how I built mine. Best of luck

I don't really see why I'd do this if I had a proper milling machine.

6:00 hell no!

HAHAHA what's that little green screwdriver???? Plz throw that away

Thing that i don't understand. Peoples like you how have skills, paying small chinese machine even you can get old heavy machines same price or even under that.. You can make things at steel if you have tools but if you have toys you only use soft materials

u dont want that ole thing, just sell it to me w/cross slide.

That is a terrible finish!!!!