Made a stand for my mill...

[irving2008]

Bill,

I understand why you'd think so but I dont think it needs it. The mill base is bolted into the cross-members with 8" long 1/2" coach bolts and the cross members at the bottom are similarly bolted to the side runners. The centre of gravity is directly between the legs. As part of the testing before I put the mill on the base I put it on end (so the legs were horizontal) and stood on the end of the legs without it budging.. and I weigh 76kg. For the legs to fold therefore it would need more than 76kg of side force and would have to rip the 1/2" coachbolts out of the wood.

I will be putting some side members on to support an intermediate shelf for the tooling and that will add further fore-aft integrity.

regards,
Irving...

[Smiler]

If you just box in the sides with ply, that will do the trick Irving. It will also give you a rather nice enclosed cabinet for your tooling too. Bookshelves get a very large part of their strength from the usually very thin back panel and they can be loaded well in excess of 300kg :) If I was back at work I could run it through Solidworks FEA package for you but knowing you, you have done your sums on it :)

Regards, Jeff.

[irving2008]

If you just box in the sides with ply, that will do the trick Irving. It will also give you a rather nice enclosed cabinet for your tooling too. Bookshelves get a very large part of their strength from the usually very thin back panel and they can be loaded well in excess of 300kg :) If I was back at work I could run it through Solidworks FEA package for you but knowing you, you have done your sums on it :)

Regards, Jeff.

I did do a certain amount of analysis including checking the Euler buckling load for the legs - there's a 100% safety margin there... :D

Anyway as of this evening my son helped me put the head on (he's a foot taller than me and works out so he was able to lift it up while I stood on a ladder and manoeuvred it into place), its all levelled, motor is installed and the whole thing runs silently.... all I need now is some tooling!