I needed to turn some small parts, but I don't have a lathe. So i came up with this idea.

The video is a 1" peice of 4140 steel being turned on my CNC knee mill. The material was held in a 1" end mill holder, R8 collets work even better, and the turning tool was clamped in a 6" vise. One can program it just like a normal lathe this way.

Video of MILLTURNING You will need windows media player to watch the video 518kb.

700 RPM
3 IPM feed
.03 DOC

This turning method should work well up to about 5"-6" OD, and 4"-5" long material, on a good knee mill. If your quill is loose/sloppy, you will probably get chatter. If you have a manual knee mill, or loose quill, I would reccomend using the knee as the Z axis, and leave the quill fully retracted and locked for rigidity.

Of course you could just buy a lathe, but I spent all my money on the mill :frown:

If anyone knows where you can purchase a 3" or 4" three jaw lathe chuck, with an R8 shank, let me know, otherwise I am going to have to make an adapter myself out of a boring bar adapter or possibly a shell mill holder.

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