How important is levelness of the table for lathes?

[Tozguy]

Agreed on most of the comments above. A carpenters level, used carefully, should be fine to get the table top level enough.

It is going to be tricky to get five or more legs to bear evenly on the floor without adjusters.
What about adding a third sheet of 3/4 plywood under the top to sandwich the cross studs? With everything glued together it should be a very stable top. If you plan the layout of the machines beforehand access holes can be cut in this 'under panel' as required.

Ideally, with a rigid top built like a sandwich, four beefy legs located in from the corners (to balance out the span between and beyond the legs) would be enough.

 

[bill70j]

I'll be using 2 pieces of 3/4" plywood glued together as top

Pcmaker:

A couple of things you may want to consider for your top.

1) If you're going to use plywood, you could be susceptible to twist, so reinforcing the top frame with additional blocking will help minimize that possibility. Sort of like designing a torsion box. That would stay flat.

2) As an alternative to plywood, an equally cost effective design for the top would be laminated 2X4's on edge. They would stay flat with the frame as-is.

3) In any case, if you're using a soft wood for the top, you may want to add steel plates under the mounting feet of the lathe. Without a hard surface, the feet will dig into the wood upon tightening, which makes precise leveling very difficult.

HTH, Bill

 

[RJSakowski]

I'm building a table for my 11x27 lathe that I ordered a week ago. How important is the level of the table top? The wood bench I made isn't too level.

Also, do you think this will hold 1200 pounds? Made out of 4x4s and some 2x4s.

I'll be setting my lathe, my mill, along with other tooling on top of it. I'll be using 2 pieces of 3/4" plywood glued together as top

I don't have a machinist's level. I just have a regular bubble level from Home Depot

My personal preference is metal for machine stands. As others have stated, wood is not stable with respect to changes in temperature and humidity.

That said, there are probably more bench lathes mounted on wood than steel. Since you already have the stand built, the design focus would be on improving what you have. I would put vertical supports as close to the machines' bases as possible. I would also use through bolts and nuts rather than construction screws. I would also use glue as well as fasteners on all joints. In assembling the top, I would glue the two sheets of plywood together.

Using a wood bench, you may want to consider leaving you machine mounting hardware fairly loose. Tight enough to prevent the machines from moving but not enough to create stress in the castings, causing twisting of the machine base.

 

[P. Waller]

A lathe can never be level enough in the hobby world.
Materials such as wood and steel are thermally unstable, they will both move with temperature gradients as will the substrate that you mount them on. Granite is an excellent machine base so start there, granite on a very thick and large concrete slab would be an excellent choice. There is no excuse for not excavating your home in an effort to achieve machine accuracy

Then buy a level, this is an excellent beginners choice https://www.higherprecision.com/pro...er-magnetic-precision-spirit-level-53-422-048
Place the granite base on the foundation then place the lathe on the granite and secure as needed, level the machine when the room achieves the required air temperature and density, NOW level it to the desired accuracy but make sure that the coolant pan is tilted toward the drain at all times otherwise coolant will find its way to the floor. You are now good to go, good luck.

You do realize that this is sarcasm I hope.

 

[mikey]

Actually, the word facetious came to mind.

 

[Downunder Bob]

having the bench top level is not really that important, it is, however very important that it is very stable. when the lathe is attached to the bench it can be levelled by use of shims and jacking screws. It is most important that there is no twist in the lathe or other forces causing it to hog or sag. Unfortunately making your bench out of wood uis I think asking for trouble, as the temperature and moisture content of the wood varies throughout the year it will apply various twisting, hogging, sagging forces to the bed of your lathe.

 

[Sackett]

You mean useing my lathe tossed on the tailgate of the pickup aint cool???

 

[Pcmaker]

This is the bench I just made, I hope it'll hold my 600 pound lathe and my 300 pound mill, as well as all the other tools

 

[francist]

That looks much more promising!

-frank

 

[tjb]

That's much better, but I still think you need to run some diagonals - at least on the two long sections in the back. One of the strongest building joints you can make is a triangle. It's very difficult to cause a triangle to lose its rigidity. You can't change the degrees on any of the three angles without changing the length of at least one side. (That's one of the reasons roofs are gabled instead of flat. It's also one of the reasons framers often run a temporary diagonal 2x4 across studded walls until the roof ties the building together.)

Not so with a rectangle. A perfectly laid out rectangle with four 90 degree sides can easily distort into a non-square parallelogram without any change in the length of the sides. With 1,200 lbs. of machinery on top of it, that's a formula for a disaster.

Regards,
Terry