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anchoring a lathe? cement, or wood?

For my Australian Woodfast lathe, the four attachment points are tabs that will bend to fit the floor surface.......so, the floor doesn't have to be absolutely flat for this method of securing the lathe. (It does need to be close to flat, though! :))

ko
 
My concrete floor is fairly uneven (it was an outdoor parking pad before the shop was built over top).
And is of known thickness - so bolting it down was not necessarily a good idea
Plus I like turning large, unbalanced pieces - adding a ton of stress, twist, bounce
And the lathe was too low for me - I'm 6'3".

So...after discarding a lot of ideas, i came to one very simple conclusion: add more concrete!
  1. Raised the lathe to the desired height, with a pair of car jacks.
  2. Levelled it
  3. Built forms around the legs
  4. Poured the concrete - from Ready Mix bags
  5. Poured right over the the bottom 4" of the legs. No bolts needed
That added 500 lbs of weight, its level, its rock solid. Admittedly not very portable....
Lathe anchoring.jpg
 
A floor can settle in time, and you never know how it will settle. A common approach in the industry
is to install long anchor bolts in the concrete with 1/4 of the bolts threads exposed above the floor.
A nut with heavy washers can be installed on each anchor bolt and the lathe legs positioned on top
of the washers and washers and nuts placed over the top to hold the lathe down. With this design
you can adjust each bottom nut up or down to level the lathe. You can use several nuts on the bottom
and lock them together on the larger lathes if their is a chance of the nuts loosening from vibration. This
type of mounting makes it very easy to use a laser to align the equipment. This method also allows you to
raise the level of the lathe to the working height that works for the user. On the drawing shown below the
cross bar would be foot of the lathe and disregard the Poxybase in the drawing.

still_mount_diagram.jpg
 
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