Home made table top vertical milling machine base thoughts and ideas.

[stantheman55]

Befor I get started I clicked on the 2 min totorial in red above and get a notice its no longer available. so I can't post my picture. Something for ad min to investigate.

Moving on,

Hello to all I have a first generation Smithy CB-1239 XL 3 in 1 which I plan to pull the milling head off of and turn into a stand alone milling machine. One idea is to place the lathe portion on a new flat work bench and mount the mill behind and centered to the ways of the lathe so that I can use the lathe and the saddle as my x-y axes and to mount my milling vice. rather then buy an after market x-y cross feed table

I am looking for ideas, thoughts, cautions,warnings anything to assist this build. Or if you ever thought If I had only known this or thought of that when I was building my Mill, I would have done (fill in the blank) as to the best way to go about mounting the column of the mill to the table top.

All I have at the moment is the milling head and motor and column app 3" dia plus the 6" x 8" x 1/2" plate used to mount the column to the top of the lathe gear box.
I am thinking of some kind of metal plate with a corrosponding hole for the column to sit in with a pinch arrangement to hold the column and then a 3-4 inch coller in hight with 4 circumference holes around the hole for the column to bolt it to the base/table plate.
If any one can provide other ideas and or pictures I would apprechiate it very much.
Thanks in advance.
Stantheman55

[Jon]

Not ignoring; waiting for pics. Thanks for the heads up on the pic posting tutorial video; I've removed that link.