Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan View Post
Once again, same here.



Perhaps tailstock or saddle? But as you say they don't have to be cast.

So roughly 24" bed length which I'm pretty sure is short enough to machine on a bridgeport. Is surface grinding strictly required since it's only to mount the profile rail, it's not a running surface? Just needs to be accurate...
The third casting was indeed for a saddle I'm trying to get the saddle casting to also mount the spindle casting for a mill with vertical hiwin rails

So it can accept the slides for a lathe but it could also do double duty in that I could take the spindle casting dowel and bolt it on and use the same casting for the mill

I havent ruled out epoxy granite for the bed but feel it isnt needed on a hobby size machine its not worth it,Ive done epoxy granite before for a company called zeiss over in germany ,they were damn accurate machines but hey as hobbyist or gor precision engineering it seems we might get a bit hung up on how accurate the machine is

The head casting could take a bored through hole Insert a ground master and moglice it to take a cartridge spindle.

The actual casting cost for the head is 37 quid each and the saddle 17 quid im expecting the bed to be a bit more based on him getting back to me, however the grinder i qot a quote from in sheffield will segmentally grind then line grind the A datum top and B datum foot of the bed casting flat to within 0.05 for 25 quid which seems damn reasonable.

My weak area is electronics I have seen these electronic leadscrews that let you program a pendant to machine instead of using full cnc control I would liketo have some manual control of the lathe without it being connected to a pc using MPG'S TO DRIVE THE STEPPERS does anyone know anything about this?

Ill also cross link this post/ question over on another more electronically oriented part of the forum.