Some time around January of 2021 I realized it was almost a year since I last used a machine tool (last time being when I managed to get to the lab Haas in April of 2020) and I knew I couldn’t let that happen.

Of course my original plan was to use the gorgeous machine shop at work post graduation, but due to working from home and California basically always being in the red/purple tier things weren’t looking so bright. And so I decided it was time. I opened Craigslist and started refreshing multiple times a day.

I was extremely disappointed when I missed a Bridgeport that was ~5 minutes from my house by about an hour. Funny story though, every time my family has driven down a particular street, I’ve stared into what I thought was a machine shop because I swear I could see the top of a few Haas’s. Sure enough, thats the machine shop that was selling the Bridgeport I missed.

Anyway, a few weeks later I stumbled on a listing for an Enco 9x20 lathe and I knew it had to be. It was made in the 1980s (“they don’t make them like they used to”) but was well maintained and fully functioning. The owner was an engineer who had just purchased a new larger lathe and so he needed the space and no longer needed the small lathe. I scheduled a visit for the very next day and was quite happy after my inspection. On top of that he threw in tooling and an un mounted DRO for not much more. He was also kind enough to actually load the lathe, stand, and his engine hoist in his car and even deliver the lathe to me.

Like I said, the lathe was well maintained and fully functioning and so I was able to start making chips that day!

Austin also had just set up his lathe in his garage in MA and so we shared obligatory lathe turd pictures

Next step was mounting the DRO and the scales. With my limited tooling I decided to just print the necessary brackets for now and I’d remachine them as needed when I have the tooling later in life. The lathe is honestly the perfect size for keeping with me for a long time. It can be used to turn every Uppercut part except the weapon pulleys which is more than enough for my typical projects.

A photo dump of the highlights of mounting the scales. All the mounts are thick but hollow ish to take advantage of polar moments and printing. They’re stiff enough since they’re not loaded normally, and I was able to dial them in reasonably. You might be wondering why I cantilevered the x axis scale off the back and its because the scale itself was too tall to be mounted in line with the x axis on the carriage. Plus it would have either gotten in the way of parts/tooling/tailstock. Plus its not like I have a lack of space in the garage yet!

The finished lathe! (excluding a garolite chip guard I attached to the x-axis scale shortly after)

For now I just wood screwed the DRO stand into the wall behind the lathe. Will make a better mount some day (probably haha)

Obviously the accuracy of a manual machine like this is entirely based on the machinist skill even with a DRO but I like that the DRO is accurate enough to make hitting dimensions like that with ease.

I’m also quite happy with the rigidity and power of the machine. I turn most things at the highest spindle speed and it turns out great. In the mean time, I’ve machined some titanium shafts for a small robot, some alloy steel shoulder bolts (pretty hard) for an injection mold, and cleaned up/redid the bores to update some Uppercut pulleys. Plus this silly little pill looking thing that’s a brass piece press fit into an aluminum piece.