It’s easy to lose track of time when one is busy solving/building puzzles. I’m chanting at the bit to pollute the site with another one but I’ve been warned by SWMBO that when you’re on a good thing, not everyone shares the sentiment.
So to remove that sense of momentum, I thought I’d slow down the pace by this imported project previously posted at LJ on July 14, 2018… 2018... 2018, hell was I born back then?
For anyone with time to waste, this milling table (and MK 1) are covered in the first few minutes at the start of this video,
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Boys and Girls,
It's hard to imagine that I posted my Lathe disc sander with micro adjustment nearly 22 months ago. Time seems to fly as you get older… if only taxes and gotchas could drop at the same rate!
Walking through my local shoe shop (that's man-speak for machinery) last Christmas, I came across the milling table (in gallery picture #1), with an inviting princely price tag of $20.00. Never one to turn down a bargain, I decided to sacrifice a red note (colour of an Australian $20 note… not the boring Yankee green) and maybe decide what to do with it later.
I dragged it over to the counter… yes dragged… the bloody thing weighed 24.35 kg… and don't forget the ".35kg"… after all, the straw that broke the camel's back weighed less … only to be informed that someone had played "musical decimal points" with the tag and it should have read $200.
Grimacing at the thought of dragging it back to the shelf, it turned out that the person serving me was the manager and it being Christmas and he'd just celebrated the birth of his first son, he insisted I take it for the marked $20… I objected profusely to paying $20 for a $200 item (the loss of depreciation would be tragic), but after he insisted with the threat of a thorough thrashing, not feeling belligerent I surrendered and conceded to purchase it. They even brought out the forklift to load it into the boot of my car. Practically dragging the back axle on the ground, I drove it home.
After much cussing, I resorted to swear words, closely followed by profanities, I managed to unload it from the boot and managed to wheel it into my workshop and coax it on top of my lathe's bed.
Even before I made any form of mounting attachment for the lathe bed, I started contemplating the future hassles I will be facing while loading and offloading that 25kg monster… I started wishing I had taken that $180 savings in cash instead (as if)…
First thing I did was make a cabinet, the same height as the lathe bed to rest the milling table on so at least I could slide it onto the lathe bed easier,
with that "support" behind me I felt more complacent and refused to cower from thoughts of my hernia.
Made up a mounting base for it, and used a piece of merbau decking as a "runner" between the rails,
Used the same attaching mechanism to the lathe as I did for the other table (MK 1),
though this was a mute exercise because of its weigh… I was obsessed with the thought that it wasn't gonna move.
Now for what is becoming a typical LBD deviation…
I customised my old tabletop to attach to the new milling table with the use of the mag switches (gallery pictures #2 and #3). Unfortunately in typical fashion I measured once and cut 5 times… By that I mean I screwed up and mounted the mag switch "mounters" in the wrong place. The way it was mounted, I couldn't move the tabletop far enough to the left (headstock) to get the track over the disc's "sweet spot" (towards the edge).
Fortunately I was saved by technology… I could move the track over the "sweet spot" on the right hand side (back) and as my lathe has a reverse. That way I can sand clockwise, thus bearing down rather than trying to rip the work upwards.
End of deviation…
Using SketchUp, I started working on a wooden tabletop design with t-tracks
I had to do some creative manoeuvring to get the table height up over the lathe's spindle level, through the use of 3 layers of 19mm pine boards,
Next conundrum was attaching the tabletop to the milling table. I initially designed my own mitre tracks…
though I had difficulty as the knobs hindered mitre slot access… then I thinking there must be an easier way, I remembered my mag-switches. Quickly incorporated the switches into the design and subsequently included in the build,
The large hole through the top 2 layers was to accommodate the mag-switch's collar and height of the knob
and a cap to cover up the hole so I don't lose my tools down it,
Mounted onto the table and after aligning the tabletop, secured it with two magnets (gallery picture #4 or two picture up if you are too lazy to scroll all the way up). Now the strength of these magnets continue to surprise me even after all these years of use… I could lift the milling table off the lathe using the mag-switch attached tabletop… still bloody heavy (probably about 1kg more with the tabletop), however, the pine tabletop permitted circumvention of the milling table's sharp metal edges and corners.
Loaded a job on the tabletop using the sled from my old version and I somehow remembered that for small wheels the sled asis was ok,
however for larger wheels there was too much of an overhang without sufficient support,
and without it the sanpaper would drag the edge sown and break the jigs spindle, let alone gouge the work piece (BTDT).
I temporarily attached the support from my old table under the wheel's leading edge,
and quickly designed a custom fit one for the new table
Now somewhere in all this too-ing and fro-ing I had a "Tim The Toolman" moment.
That yellow sanding disc was poopsie and I reverberated the mantra… "Argh, Argh, Argh… I needed a bigga disc!!!"
SOOoo, I made a new one… I did have to curb my enthusiasm due to the limited ranges in sizes and the 20" was just a tad too big for my lathe's swing, so I compromised,
a slightly beefier 320mm diameter job. This time I used my cordless trimmer circle cutter and considering I was going through 18mm MDF with a ¼" router bit, I was again amazed at the absence of sawdust… I can only emphasise that this has taken me totally off guard… for once in a good way.
Used my threader to tap a spindle thread. To align the job as accurately as I could, I mounted a plumbob into a Jacobs chuck in my tail stock (as a plumbob is supposed to give a perfect vertical, I thought if it wasn't plum it was worth a bob),
and used that to centre the job,
(the above picture was taken off a highly paid stunt double as the original picture was out of focus…).
Another reason for making the cabinet stand for the milling table was to permit moving it to the drill press. Fortunately I could lower the drill table to the level of the cabinet and use this cradle to support the "runner",
As always, if you found this ho-hum, don't read any further and ensure you miss the follow up article about the dust collector I have designed for this ridiculously messy contraption… the disc that is… not the table…
to replace,
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Don’t be crafty Craftisians,... SHARE your craft!
If your first cut is too short... Take the second cut from the longer end... LBD
That is quite an under taking! Do you sand all the way across the disc or only on the left side that is going down? That is a nice milling table. now you need a milling or router head mounted on the tops and you will have a Smithy!!!
Cheers, Jim ........................ Variety is the spice of life...............Learn something new every day
Now you are out of the Fred Flintstone tire world and into the Pirellis, should help your mobiles track a lot better at speed! Turned a wood lathe into a pseudo metal lathe, nice adaptation. 👍
So, that's what success looks like. I'm tempted to give it another try. I have a short attention span, if it ain't working it winds up on the shelf,until I need the shelf space.
I had a small drill press vice attached to the table, to hold a bar with a carbide cutter. The concept was valid, the execution wasn't.
Well done!!!
You don't always get what you go after,but you do get what you wouldn't have got if you didn't go after what you didn't get. Blaze Foley
Thanks all... While this was built specifically for the lathe, I've had great success with it on the DP tabletop... once I level it out. Problem is it's such a hassle to drag it over and put it on the DP, I just couldn't be bothered to get the camera, hence no real pictures. On the DP, the micro adjustment is great.
hairy .....I had a small drill press vice attached to the table, to hold a bar with a carbide cutter. The concept was valid, the execution wasn't.
That was my first take... it worked OK for my sanding needs (and "micro" adjustments)... It was the price and smooth action of the posted item in the shop that doriginaly endeared me to it... the rest (cost) was just good fortune.
If your first cut is too short... Take the second cut from the longer end... LBD
Foghorn commented 12 minutes ago Nice work! My Taig lathe would run circles around it though for miniaturized versions of what you're building with it. :)
Thanks Foggy, but without pictures I can only postulate... when you mentioned "run Circles", my immediate thought was of turning bowls, and a bowl to me is like the guilotene was to Marie Antoinette.
If your first cut is too short... Take the second cut from the longer end... LBD
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