Securing a lathe

[smidsy]

Hei Guys,
It isn't practical to bolt my MC900 down with a dyna bolts through each leg because I sometimes need to move it, but hooking a leg round the bottom brace of the lathe stand to stop it moving while I rough a peice of timber isn't all that good either.

I was thinking of a turn buckle under each of the lower front/back cross braces running to dynabolts on the floor which would allow me to secure the lathe but quickly and easily unsecure it for moving.
Thoughts/ideas?
Cheers
Paul

[barryr]

how about drill the holes but use dowels rather than dynabolts (metal dowels of course) , at least that would be quick to move.

Alternatively you could set a nut in the concrete and have a short "butterfly" bolt to screw down in to it !

[graemet]

I've made a shelf attached to the legs of the lathe stand/bench and loaded it up with housebricks, mostly stacked at the headstock end. The whole thing never moves while turning but needs to be unloaded if I want to shift it around. I've also heard of using bags of sand instead of bricks.
Graeme

[Ruffy]

Bags of sand work really well, it is what I used. Got 6 from Bunnings about $4 each filled them with crappy dirt from a vacnt block down the road.

And as has been suggested elsewhere in the is forum bags of cement also work well, but who wants to pick those up even if only on the odd occasion. :rolleyes:

Easy to move them if I have to move the 900 which I have to do fairly regularly

[Zed]

I use a bag of concrete on my workmate bench. seems to be ok...

I'd recommend those 40kg bags of brickies sand from bunnies cheap and cleaner than conctrete bags...

[barnsey]

With my MC900, I found by the time I put the 1" ply shelf on it, my turning tools, faceplates, chucks and assorted tool rests, the whole thing was heavier than bags of sand and kept everything close handy. ;) To each their own I guess - only ever had one problem when a piece i was working on exploded and the residue in the chuck was wildly out of balance. Mind you I had my nose on the floor avoiding flying bits initially but got to the OFF button without further duress :eek: :eek: :eek:

[brushy]

I have a design for a stand from TimeLife book that uses particleboard and sand for weight. I am planning to put one under my MC900. I can scan and send it if required.

Ennis

[Bruce Micheal]

Paul
Carbatec are advertising cast iron legs for the MC 900 an 1100.($129.00) I don't know how stable they are. but it may solve your problem.
I have a MC 900 and suffer the same probs.
I am going down to Carbetec in Brisbane next week (how lucky am I?) to view these legs, if there not what I thought they would be, I am making a new stand my self. I'm a reasonable welder as long as the metal is at least 10mm thick!

[smidsy]

Hei Bruce,
I've seen the cast iron legs but I don't think they would do much in terms of stopping movement because they would still need to be bolted down. Something else to think about is that cast iron is brittle and I'm not sure how long those legs would last vibrating against a concrete floor.

Ennis, I'd be interested in the Time life plan if you could e-mail it to me - check your pm's.
Something I've thought of incorporating in to a stand is a wind down undercarriage for ease of moving - this would would mean you could load the stand up with weight and not break your back unloading the weight to move the lathe.
You can get el-cheapo 750kg trolley jacks for $20 from Autopro, I don't think I'd trust my car on one of these, but it'd be ideal to harvest the hydraulics and build in to a stand to wind down some wheels.
Cheers
Paul