I think I may have made a mistake.

Home Model Engine Machinist Forum

Help Support Home Model Engine Machinist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

marfaguy

Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2011
Messages
17
Reaction score
0
Well I got the roll around cabinet built, drawers made and installed and mounted
the mill and lathe on the top that I talked about in my intro.
http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=12291.0

Anyway after reading about John, BogStandard's, lathe rebuild on the madmodder site,
http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=627.0
I'm wondering if mounting the equipment on a roll around is a good idea.
I've built the cabinet square and I know the top is pdf (pretty dang flat) as all
the partitions were cut to size using the sliding table I made for my
my table saw and using stop blocks to get the length's uniform. I also built
the carcass upside down so the face frames are exactly flush to the partition tops.
I also clamped the face frames together and passed a borrowed jointer plane across
the top to make sure they were true to line before assembly. AFAICT the top
is dead flat, well as dead flat as MDF can be. There is very little visible light
across the table when I lay my very good straight edge across it at any point,
and there was no rocking when I place the lathe bed down prior to bolting it down.

Still, I wonder if I should jack the cabinet up onto blocks and get level it,
then only use the casters if I need to move it, then re-level it and not let
it sit for very long on the casters. Or should I plan on abandoning the whole
roll around idea altogether and make new separate permanent stations.
If the carcass is squarallel, meaning it's square and all sides are parallel
then it shouldn't matter… but then again I'm new to this side of building 'stuff.

- Charles
 
You will not be happy with wheels under your lathe. The very first time you have to swing something which is not perfectly balanced, your lathe will be walking around the room.
 
The lathe only weighs 86 pounds, according to the Micro-Mark site, and you have built a very solid and square cabinet for it. As long as the casters lock, and the lathe is bolted to a flat and solid surface, I think you could tap dance on the top while using the lathe, and still have strength and rigidity to spare. You could, I suppose, level the cabinet on blocks just so that you can check the lathe bed with a machinist's level, to make certain there is no twist in it. The only thing I would question is the choice of mdf for the top. Mdf has a flat surface, but it isn't as rigid as you might like. It has a tendency to sag over time. I believe I would have used a hard maple top, perhaps 1 and 1/2 to 2 inches thick. You used to be able to pick up hard maple butcher block countertops at Home Depot for a pretty reasonable price, and since they are laminated from a number of different boards, they stay quite flat. Kiln dried Maple is quite stable after it is seasoned. And if it ever did happen to move, it's pretty easy to flatten it again with that jointer plane and a set of winding sticks. Ash or white oak would also be a pretty good choice.
 
Thanks guys,
Brian,
Understood. When lathing out of balance have it jacked up off of the casters. Makes sense especially
for really out of balance stuff.
Paulsv,
I thought about a maple laminated top similar to this,
http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2005134/4966/24-x-60-Laminated-Maple-Bench-Top-70-Lbs.aspx
and am still considering it.
I wanted to stay away from natural wood products for this cabinet given known expansion/contraction conditions hence my choice of MDF.
I should have mentioned in my original post that I can still easily include "stretchers" spanning between partitions or face frames.
The face frame's top rails are 5 inches so I could easily install 5-8" wide stretchers to prevent sag. Another thought
was to make the top a separate independent torsion box.

Hopefully some more members will chime in with yay or nay comments or other suggestions.
 
Cabinet will be great. I have one of those lathes and if you run something enough off balance to move that t6able you won't want to be in the room as pieces of that lathe will be coming off. I have never tied my mini lathe down and it has never been a problem. Fast motion of the tailstock handle will make it wobble more than anything the chuck can hold.
 
I have my MM lathe and mill each sitting on one of these I got at Sam's Club. The mill is bolted down, the lathe isn't. No complaints.

img_1_20100506180007_Rolling-Cabinet-with-Drawer_300s.jpg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top