Recent content by hanermo

Many of us are happy to help. Your tools are great !. If you can make flat stuff, and accurate holes you are all set.

Whats your goal ? Most new lathes are ok on the spindle. Not great, but ok. About 0.008 mm, 8 microns, or a bit less than half a 0.001". An adjusted collet system often will do spindle bearing error/0.000 if you have a perfect pin/fit/collet. I polished a dc motor shaft extension to 6.000 mm...

As-is, Mach3 does not thread and does not do CSS. (Iow, threading is broken, in general). Some exceptions; CSLABS motion controller will thread (According to them, and very knowledgeable other users). I have mine, but its not yet installed. I amusing a centipede, atm, on lathe. Centipede will...

Shawn, naythtimonkey, and me are ALL right. If you want to make one, single, piece, for personal reasons, the very lightweight machines will work ok. I made a flat disc (chuck backplate) in cast iron on a 7x lathe. Big ie 125 mm in diameter. To less than 0.01 mm error, and 0.01 mm TIR. It is...

Mass. Heavier is better. As much as you can afford. The ONLY thing you cannot later cheaply and easily upgrade, is rigidity, which depends on mass. About 2005, I spent about 200 hours and 250€ making a good, slid, rigid, stiff accurate mount for my 7x lathe. Lathe cost 450€ ish. 40 kg or so...

Let us know how you get on. I scratch built an (industrial) cnc mill, so I got a lot of experience when building it ... Cheers, Hannu from the land of the flamenco (In Barcelona)