Great idea!!! I can't believe that I never thought of it long ago as I'm always adapting tools to other uses. I have an old Atlas metal lathe that I haven't used for years that I had intended to dismantle and sell the parts on e-bay. I can keep the bed and legs to use for a base. I've got everything else to construct a CNC shaft machine. I've just been waiting on getting some 80/20 to use as a base. I've also got a cast iron wood lathe that I don't use that Chris just pointed out would be a good base. It doesn't have stout legs however so I would have to set it up on a unused flat surface which is a rare commodity in my shop. Thanks to both of you,
Dick
Awesome. I was going to bolt the linear bearing rails directly to the bed top. Then mount a plate of aluminum or steel on top of them as a carriage for the Z axis, and mount 2 more linear bearing rails on the aluminum plate as the X axis. Another plate on top of these rails to form a base for my tooling. This plate would be machined with multiple T-Slots and/or threaded holes in order to mount a toolpost both in front of and behind the work.
The headstock on mine had the motor hanging out the back with the exposed pulley system. I was going to strip the headstock entirely of its gears and pulleys, and then mount new bearings in it, and drive it with a single pulley and VFD. And then use the existing tailstock.
Another option would be to make a new headstock like on the Cuesmith lathes, thats basically a box of aluminum. This way there is more options in its design and height.
Good luck with your project.
