G'day Bob Gitsham from Adelaide, South Australia. i have just joined this forum last night. I'm a retired marine engineer. My first qualification was fitter turner / toolmaker, I added Hydraulics fitter, specialist welder and finally marine engineer

After retiring I realised I missed the work of high quality machining and fitting so after much discussion with friends and arguments with "she who must be obeyed", I and against her wishes I bought a lath

My new lathe is a LD 1216 Still getting the hang of it, but so far so good. I also want a mill but do not have the room. So am thinking of building a vertical spindle milling attachment for the lathe. Interested if anyone has any info on such a project..

G'day Dave, A beast you say. A little on teh small size for my liking but it will do. I had wanted to get the next size up 13"swing with a gap and 24"long but I just don't have the room. The 1216 is the largest I can fit in my garage and still get the car in, with no room to expand.

So the answer is to build a vertical spindle milling attachment that will clamp to the bed after removing the chuck, and replacing it with a 6" pulley and a belt drive to the spindle then I'll have all 12 speeds available from the headstock gearbox.

A bit disappointing that the cross slide doesn't have "T"slots, and it's not really thick enough to risk cutting them. So my plan is to bolt a 1/2 "thick plate to the top of the cross slide with countersunk socket head cap bolts and have the plate predrilled with a series of drilled and tapped 12mm holes in a grid, this should allow me to bolt anything down that I need to.

G'day Chris, good to hear that you lathe is still going strong after 20 years, I hope mine does too but I doubt if I'll last that long.