Your thoughts on a lathe / mill / drill combo machine

[DaveO]

He sells a lot of equipment to the Amish, He removes the motors and controls for them

Does he remove the "modern convenience" aspect of it so the Amish are able to use it? Does he refit them with mechanically driven spindles, or something?

[Trip59]

Does he remove the "modern convenience" aspect of it so the Amish are able to use it? Does he refit them with mechanically driven spindles, or something?

Believe it or not, there have been several discussions on this at some of the pro machinist forums. They actually do that, pull the motors and convert the drives to overhead belt. The machines I've seen this done to in the recent past were some big old Lodge and Shipley lathes.

[cbmkr]

Yes , AC Motors are not allowed, Some use DC motors or run them on the old time power shaft that runs thru the building with the flat belts powering the machines. Anyone who has not seen a building with a powershaft system in it needs to, it is pretty amazing what the do to get the power to different machines and how they change the RPM.

We had a 120" bed 16" metal lathe in our retail truck equipment business in the driveline shop that was made in 1901, The brand was POND it had a three sheave flat belt drive , that ran thru an old 3 speed truck transmission to a 10 hp electric motor. The original owner of the company was from Germany and made the conversion on the lathe it was a very professional job and even impressed the OSHA inspector at the time.