Adding a horizontal spindle to a vertical mill

[tonyfoale]

A little while back I made a post here showing how over six decades ago I converted a horizontal mill to a vertical machine, see Ancient horizontal to vertical mill conversion.

This time I did the opposite. i.e. I added a horizontal spindle to a vertical milling machine. This time it was done during last week not decades past. Although I did this on a Bridgeport base the same techniques could be used on many other milling machines. I attach a PDF file with full details of the work. Included here are some photos without explanation, to pique your interest. Explanations are all in the PDF file.

Click images for full size.

[DIYer]

Thanks tonyfoale! We've added your Vertical Mill Horizontal Spindle to our Milling category,
as well as to your builder page: tonyfoale's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Vertical Mill Horizontal Spindle by tonyfoale

tags: mill, modification

[tonyfoale]

I forgot to mention that the bearing housing and spindle only takes a minute to remove so it and the motor, another minute, can be mounted on a plate that can be bolted to a lathe cross slide. Either aligned with the X or the Z axis. When aligned with the X it will allow roughing out cam shaft blanks using the same setup and software that drives my cam grinding conversion (which will be described in a future post).
With motor and spindle mounted on a plate like that it can also be bolted to the mill table and used when a non-indexed rotary motion is needed. It would turn a CNC mill into a CNC lathe, Just a question of coordinated Z and X movements.

Lathe to cam grinder
Click for full size.