Thread: What top for a lathe stand?

Ern ,
check in with Harry72 , he built a great steel frame for his XP.

Mine's on a wood bench so can't help you on this one .

Hi Ern,

Are you thinking about reducing vibration?
Is this why you want to use a wooden top supporting the bed?

Another "hobby" of mine has to do with turntables (record players) and one way of reducing vibration with these is to make their plinths from laminated layers of MDF and Ply.

So you could consider putting a piece of 18mm or 25mm MDF between your layers of ply. Don't know if it makes any difference with lathes, but its just a thought, and if nothing else it will add mass.

I never thought of putting timber between my stand and the lathe bed. Mine is bolted directly to the stand that was made for the DVRXP. That is how I bought it.

Cheers,

FrankG.

Hi Frank,

No, it's (a) just to simplify the fixing of the bed, and (b) to provide some bench space behind the bed and where the extension would otherwise be for its occasional use.

Ern ,
why take the extension off ? are you short of space ?

I have always used 19mm ply under mine.

Ern,

Dragging up memories anti-vibration tests from my old R&D days etc.

To be most effective you need to mechanically isolate the lathe from the legs. If bolt through the wood to the legs there is no mechanical isolation and not much will be gained.

So I would suggest to make the bed timber big enough to have a separate set of bolts to the bolts that hold it to the legs.

Glue up a decent sandwhich of ply and MDF, probably two layers of MDF and three of ply. If you use thinner MDF say 13-15 or whatevers available. It should do with out looking like a neanderthal surf board.

Not from memory how good your bench was. But that would be an easy fix

Ern,

Here's a pretty simple, straight-forward, sturdy stand that might work for you.
The legs are 2" black pipe threaded at each end to receive a flange. The flange is bolted to the floor and to the ply at top. The ply is 1 1/2" thick made from two pieces of 3/4" laminated together...plenty of strength to hold the Nova 1500.
Bolt the ply at the wall end with an "L" bracket (mine are 6" brackets)

I can swing full capacity and the lathe has minimal vibration when roughing and none when the piece is in round.

Thanks guys.

Jock, the extension will only get occasional use so otherwise there'd be a nice bit of bench space to park a cuppa, the tools in use, the finish, an ash tray and a welter of shavings.

: good enough for me.

Neil, thanks, vibe damping might be an incidental benefit then but the real reason is to simplify the steel frame fabrication - so the guy doesn't have to weld tabs on the top in the right places. And I like a wood surface.

Ed, thanks for the pics. What's worked for me before is basically a couple of trestles out of RHS joined by rails. (Added: the trestles are welded, and bolted to the concrete floor; the rails are then bolted to the trestles - to cope with the uneven floor. If necessary the top gets shimmed for flatness.)

Heavy guage 8" C section makes a good flat base to suit nova's, soon add a shelf for extra space. CIG glue sticks will work well

Not real happy with my stand, the spindle is to close to the splayed legs so I'm forever kicking them. Thinking about turning the lathe around on the stand, put the splayed legs at the tail stock end.
Then once I get my room set up it'll be bolted down to 5T of concrete

Sorry Ern, I may have misunderstood what you were doing.

My lathes sre bolted to a steel stand through a sheet of ply.

One lathe that I put on a wooden bench was bolted to 40MM ply with steel plates acting as washers underneath.

I used that lathe (TL1500) for about 10 years with no ill affects to its stability.

Ah, ok. Thanks .

Ern one thing to consider with the nova lathes is that the shavings drop into the bed gap.

They are a pain in the butt to clean out if you have a solid timber top. Best to have an open top and create a chute for the shavings to drop through to as this will make cleaning up easier. As you can see by eds bench all clear underneath.

Ah, thanks for that warning Jim.

[Maybe that could be made to be a virtue. Vision of a couple of 4" dusty ports in the base. Hmm, but then when the inevitable happens and something is dropped ... whoosh ;-} ]

Ern,
The bed extension has to be bolted on with 4 bolts from underneath . The gap in the bed is too narrow to be able to do this , even with the cranked allum key .
I have to tip the whole unit away from me , over on its side , to add the bed sections.
That rather makes it a one off job .

One option might be to get the Swing Away Accessory so that you can hinge the end section of the bed right around , back on to itself . You would need about 600mm clearance behind the lathe for that tho.

For the issue of waste build up inside the bed , 20 - 40 mm ply shims across the bolt lines will leave a gap that will enable clean out.