I've admired this unit for years. Alan Jackson, the designer and builder sells a complete set of plans for about £80. I have no stake in it, just thought it might be interesting. 😉
Hi John, the reason for the overhead support bar is that it is part of the tailstock.The spindle and tailstock can be moved vertically, enabling the headstock to be used as a small milling machine with the cross slideacting as a milling table.Beautiful work. Why does the tail stock have that support bar from the headstock?
Check out all those pictures everybody in the link post #3 from David. There are 4 pages of description and many more photos showing the multitude of operations showing this machines capabilities. There is a lot more to that machine than just a lathe! Wow.Hi John, the reason for the overhead support bar is that it is part of the tailstock.The spindle and tailstock can be moved vertically, enabling the headstock to be used as a small milling machine with the cross slideacting as a milling table.
Alan
Junque,Alan - wow, you must be keeping an eye on things going on online! 😉
Nice to see you here - it's been a while since you first came up with this design, is there anything about it you have changed or would change now?
It's a pity your machine is not commercially available - no chance of having a run of them made offshore?
Or what about a kit of finished or semi-finished parts like the old Lewis Machine Co. kits?
Hi Junque, Sorry for the late reply I have been ill with sepsis and am making a very slow recovery. As to a swing arm mounting it is entirely possible its just a customer preference ( this is if there were any stepperheads availableFantastic Alan, a new design of gib and patent applied for? And your collet chuck closure system; also patent-pending? I will have to study your PDF later and come back to this. One thing I did wonder about was having a swing-arm mounting for the laptop; I'm sure you could improve on the current designs!
Somehow, somewhere this needs to come into production!