Thread: Vertical milling attachment for lathe

Hi forum gurus

Just purchased my first AL-320G lathe. Waiting on delivery.
Saw some info that you can use lathe as a milling machine too, please advice if anyone has done that and what milling attachment would you recommend.
I would like to be able to mill up to 300x300mm steel plates, not sure if it will be possible on my lathe. If not, the more that attachment can handle, the better.

You aren't going to get anything like 300x300. You wont have that much cross-slide. If you are going to use your compound as the other slide, then even less.
I made an angle plate so I could use the compound slide. It sucks as a mill, but its better than a file.
Still there has been plenty of work done with them.

Your lathe has 150mm of cross slide and 100mm of compound slide according to the specs(might be a little more or a little less).
H&F have vertical slides. The large one has 80mm travel
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/Vertical-Mill-Slides

Stustoys has pretty much nailed it. All I really wanted to cut was short slots so I made my own lathe milling attachment but after mangling half a dozen pieces of steel slots I gave up andbought a small mill.

100% agree. If you want to mill, buy a mill. Doing it on a lathe is a torturous exercise.

I visited this idea when I first got my lathe and wanted to do basic milling.

I think I did one job, milling some round stainless bar with a flat section for use as a spit.

It worked, but I quickly realised that milling machines were invented for good reason!

Simon

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