Hello.



I'm slowly working my shed into more of a machine shop. Last year was all about getting a Tig welder working, and a bandsaw in place. With those tools I'm in the process of making a folding workbench that will work in a small space.



I have some experiences with lathes and mills, I know the power they hold over all things mechanical. So I'm hear to ask a lot of questions about my initial setup. I have a decent Ideal of what I want, so in that regard I should be pretty low maintenance!

My Grandfather was a mechanical engineer by trade and I spent a lot of time in the shop helping him up to my mid 20's. Unfortunately when he wrapped it all up I didn't have enough experience to even contemplate running his business.

Now at last I have enough disposable income to set myself up at home.

Thank you for the Welcome!

I think making space is the hardest part of any job at home. I only have a 3 meter x 3 meter shed to work in. I also have 2 motorbikes that live in there as well!

It's why I'm working out a decent workbench first. Once it's finished I'll be ready to think about the lathe. The current workbench design is a 1500mm x 600mm skeleton,15 stringers of 25mm x 3mm box. With a drop in 700×600 3mm plate over the centre. The stringers are set to take a vice or bench grinder in 3 places and the vice can be slid all the way front to back. The whole top will fold flat to the wall by removing the front leg pins. I'm at the stage now where to top is fully welded, and I'm thinking about how to make the legs function the way i want them to. I have the design in my head so it's just a matter of realising that in metal.

I recon I have a space of about 450mm x 1200mm. So I'm hoping to be able to get something like the weiss/warco/chester wm250/DB10s. I need to do a lot more digging about first to be sure of the model and electrics. I have seen several threads all relating to the motors and control gear on those lathes been sub par. But for the price and with the power cross feed I think it's something i could work with. I need to spend a few hours looking at pictures of the PCB's and working out if there is anything special like micro-controllers that would stop me been able to DIY fix most of the problems.

As for the tip, I hate that place! We just save up the junk and hire a skip for the day.

As for projects, I actually want to build an airsoft sterling machine gun with a full airsoft gearbox. So 30 rounds a second full auto on 6mm BB's. It's probably not what this forum is geared to dealing with, but the scale is right!