100% Homemade Lathe

Step 2 The Bed

As you can see in the diagram mentioned in the previous step, the bed is kind of the frame of the lathe. Since I wanted to be able to handle pieces up to 30 inches long, I need 30 inches between the headstock and tailstock (reminder: see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe_(tool) diagram]). I figured I needed about 8 inches for the headstock (basically a pulley for power from motor, supports, and a chuck to hold the work) and 4 inches for the tailstock (supports work on the other end), so I figured the bed should be about 40 inches long.

The bed needs to be very solid and not flexible or the material will wiggle all over as you are trying to work with it. I had an 8 foot long piece of 1/8" thick aluminum angle, 1.5" x 1.5". Out of the 96", I cut two 40" pieces for the main rails. This design turned out to be slightly more wiggly than I had hoped, maybe for the second version I will use steel.

The picture shows the two pieces on a stool in the orientation they will be in.

Comments

[Phred1701]

You may want to consider steel angles. A real good source for those would be an old metal bed frame. They are very heavy steel and designed to support a lot of weight across their span, come about 6' long and usually 2 per bed. Just my tuppence...

[stoobers]

Yes, bed frames. I use them for all sorts of projects. They are hot rolled steel, which means the surface is sometimes a little rough. They also have carbon in them, so they can be hardened. Which means, when drilling, if it over heats, it turns purple and you can't drill anymore. Bed frames are very "overlooked" for home projects.

[threesixesinarow]

The bed of my grandfather's lathe, which is an old one like this, is also built up from several pieces, it's the opposite way, though, with the corners at the outside. There are spacers underneath at intervals along its length that keep the sides vertical and the center channel consistent enough to register the headstock and tailstock, they're short to make clearance for the clamping plates but those are as wide as the parts on top so the whole thing is quite stiff for its light weight, and gains even more when it's bolted to a heavy table.