[lstool]

Yup,
I was answering a post about those 3 in 1 combo machines and stated that I woulden't touch those combo machines with a 10 foot pole.
Than got carried away as usual and wrote the following and decided it might be worth while putting here.......

Nuthin like a nice Bridgeport. I don't know if any one here has done this before but before I got my CNC lathe I have used my CNC Bridgeport as a CNC lathe many times.

1) Once you can chuck your work in your spindle (via. fixture or custom made chuck for your spindle, R8 in my case) your on your way.

2) You can make a nice fixture to hold gang tools 4 or 5 tools or more if necessary even drilling & boring

3) Now it gets a little tricky (you are programing radious not diameter) you have to fool the machine in the way you program to turn your parts.

4) (remember you cannot do this if you cannot programe your spindle) now to keep the machine from going home for a tool change (and we are not changing tools we are moving over to a new tool, also we cant forget about those dreaded tool offsets when you are using a few tools) you wright down the offsets and position to that offset for that tool in absolute (add .100 for clearance) and programe in incramental. or to advoid all that if you have the luxury to do so depending on the job set all tools at the same .000 level using your spindles readout to accomplish this.

There you have it, turned your CNC mill to a CNC lathe this is only worth while if you are making alot of parts and you dont have a CNC lathe on hand, Or as in my situation at the time Your CNC lathe had not yet arrived and you had to get the job done one way or another (but definately not manualy). or perfect for contouring. so for all you guys building a home CNC mill concider keeping that spindle as hefty as possible you may want to turn some nice parts. You can never have too much spindle anyway.
Happy Machining