Thread: lathe stand

my new lathe has what i think is an inadequate stand. what should i make it out of i was thinking of making a 4 meter long table out of 30x30 rhs with the lathe bed supported by a frame of 50x50 rhs. would this idea work or is it silly to combined a work bench and lathe stand into one ??

Personally, I would not combine a general workbench with the lathe stand. To optimise lathe accuracy, it must be set up on its support to very tolerances to ensure that there are no twists in the bed, and then it must be kept that way.

Combining the lathe stand with a workbench would, I suspect, lead to movement the first time something on the bench got belted with a hammer or mallet, throwing out what could be a few hours work getting the lathe to it's best potential.

I suspect that even 50mm sq would not be rigid enough to use for a stand. The commercial sheet metal units that come with some units are typically in the order 450 x 300 at the head and 300 sq at the tail and are frequently prone to movement. The last place where I worked where we set up a Chinese 1m bc lathe we made the stand from 75mm sq x 5mm tube mounted directly under the mounting points and fully braced. This gave us a solid platform for the machine once securely dynabolted to the floor.

i think i might make them to separate units. i didn't want it to be a bash bench for a place where i can assemble small parts,layout and a place to put a surface plate.

I would make them separate, but having a small bench space on the tail stock end to put a few things could be handy.

Dave