Anchor 2200# lathe to concrete floor or not?

[Dave C]

I was surprised, but in a lot of Texas, there isn't any such thing as a "basement". It's mostly slab houses. A real "basement", down 7 or 8 feet, would probably have a more consistent soil moisture and less movement. But maybe the soil is WHY there are no basements to speak of.

The people I know in TX all have slab houses.

I don't know about Texas, but here in Mississippi we don't have basements because of the water table. You can dig a post hole today, and tomorrow it will be full of water. The hydraulic effect could lift a house with a basement right up out of its hole. Also, similar to Texas, we have unstable deposits of "Yazoo Clay" that shrinks and swells in accordance with seasonal variations in moisture content. Slabs and driveways do crack if not constructed properly.

[Danl]

BCRider,

I thought someone might misinterpret what I said, sorry. No, they wanted the tops of the piers to be the same elevation as the rest of the floor, not sitting above it.

Dan L

[BCRider]

Sounds like they also want to see the machine raised up by that 10 inch rise. What's the height of the spindle axis as it sits now? Or do the instructions show or specify pads of these dimensions in the floor?

[lakeside53]

Typical requirement of many manfs. That's because they want you to install for both pull down and push up. If you are just securing for "tip over" Make some toe clamps.

If you want to install their way, make a template from plywood. Plywood holds e J-bolts while the concrete sets.

[Danl]

Dan ask the guy you bought it from, who bolted the risers down and then bolted the hollow adjuster screws to the riser, did he ever have trouble with it? He had it for 25 years that way.
If you are concerned about the lathe moving on you check the level of the ways every six months.

parts

I did not see you sneak in here, parts. I'm gonna bolt it down, for sure. It's just the details I'm focusing on now. As indicated in my opening post, Nardini recommends bolting it down, but they call for two 24" square by 10" deep concrete floor piers in which 8" J bolts are set. Not having anything other than an decent engine hoist is a real limitation, and if one of the J bolts is inadvertently set 1/8" out of position the jackbolts in the base of the lathe won't line up.

Thanks,

Dan

[Joel]

In Texas, there are virtually no basements at all (I have only seen one down here). The reason they don't exist is simple. Any footing has to go below the frost line, which is 7 feet or so up north, but only about 5-10" here, so a slab is all you need. When you have to dig down and put blocks all the way around for the foundation, it is not too much added work to excavate the dirt out of the center to gain a lot of square footage, so doing it is a no-brainer.

Pier and beam foundations are found on many old homes, but very seldom done in new construction. I much prefer slabs, except for the rare occasion when it stays cold for long periods. In floor heating doesn't make sense here and hot air works well enough, but there is nothing like a warm floor. It is supposed to be 78° tomorrow, and the weather is very nice most of the year, so no complaints.

My main bench is bolted down, but my machines only have a bead of silicone around the base to fix their position. None of them ever move.

[J Tiers]

......

It must be hard to keep the garage and basement floors from cracking too. And any concrete drive ways.

I was surprised, but in a lot of Texas, there isn't any such thing as a "basement". It's mostly slab houses. A real "basement", down 7 or 8 feet, would probably have a more consistent soil moisture and less movement. But maybe the soil is WHY there are no basements to speak of.

The people I know in TX all have slab houses.

[partsproduction]

Dan ask the guy you bought it from, who bolted the risers down and then bolted the hollow adjuster screws to the riser, did he ever have trouble with it? He had it for 25 years that way.
If you are concerned about the lathe moving on you check the level of the ways every six months.

parts

[BCRider]

Here in North Texas, we have a very unstable soil (Montmorillonite Clay) that shrinks and swells with changes in moisture level. Houses and shops tend to have a dry season configuration that is totally different from the rainy season configuration. My own shop concrete slab has moved and heaved quite a bit in the past 13 years, and is not very level now, nor is it very consistent in its lack of levelness.......

If I were in an area with that sort of conditions and were there for the long term I honestly think I'd cut away a portion of the floor and dig it out and pour in a free floating slab that was thick enough and reinforced enough that it floated in place so the lathe mounted on it had a consistent bed.

Another option I could see would be some sort of frame for the lathe to sit on which connects to the floor with only three points so the lathe is never sitting on two diagonal points and causing a twist in the bed. It would not be as rigid but at least it would remain consistent.

It must be hard to keep the garage and basement floors from cracking too. And any concrete drive ways.

[EddyCurr]

What about anti vibration feet they use on big compressors.
Mark

Like these Royal Machine Mounts ?

Or something different.

.

[john hobdeclipe]

Here in North Texas, we have a very unstable soil (Montmorillonite Clay) that shrinks and swells with changes in moisture level. Houses and shops tend to have a dry season configuration that is totally different from the rainy season configuration. My own shop concrete slab has moved and heaved quite a bit in the past 13 years, and is not very level now, nor is it very consistent in its lack of levelness.

So in my case the only machine that is bolted down is the drill press, and it is not bolted down tightly.

Depending on the stability of your soil and your earthquake risk you may consider bolting your machine to the floor, but leaving a bit of room for movement. I once saw some pallets of high$$$$$ computer equipment that used a short (2") length of rubber air hose around the bolts that held the servers to the pallets, to give a bit of shock and movement protection. Perhaps you could do somewhat the same thing, giving a bit of freedom of movement but keeping the machine from tipping over.

[BCRider]

I missed the bit about you having Royal mounts. In that case you could likely get away with just marking the floor to ensure the machine doesn't walk during cuts involving vibration from being interrupted or for any other reason. Just keep in mind that you ARE relying on the weight of the machine to hold itself down. But as long as that works you'll be ducky.

The use of the jacking feature is still going to be very much needed because again floors are seldom planar over 4 or more points. So some way to bring the lathe into proper tuning for straight and twist free is needed. And that's where the jacking feature comes in.

[boslab]

What about anti vibration feet they use on big compressors.
Mark

[EddyCurr]

I do not use the lathe aggressively enough to cause it to want to move around on its own.

ie: no heavy, unbalanced faceplate work and no big interrupted cuts.

0.120-0.140" cuts in 4140 are uneventful with this machine on the Royal mounts. Danl's Nardini is the same weight as my machine and the more capable lathe - I thought long and hard about bidding on a Nardini 1440 a few years ago.

Incidently. It may not be apparent, but the Royal mounts have a (captured?) inner platform segment that rises for leveling as the square-headed central bolt is turned. There is a nut that turns down the central bolt to clamp the lathe foot to the inner platform.

.

[Paul Alciatore]

It depends on what level of accuracy you want to work to.

If a 0.002" taper in a foot is OK, then you probably do not need to anchor it or do any leveling and other set-ups. I have worked with lathes like this and you can do a lot of work on them.

But if you want to do real precision work, then you do need to do a proper leveling and set-up to get it to turn cylinders without bad tapers. But all that work is going to be completely lost if it moves even a fraction of an inch on a concrete floor. Concrete is flat to +/- 1/4 inch, at best. If you move the feet of the lathe or of the table it is mounted on even a short distance, all four feet will be sitting on an entirely different level than when you leveled it and set it up. So the entire leveling and set-up procedure will have been for naught and you are back to 0.002" tapers or worse.

1. Forget wood tables. Wood breathes. Use one kind of metal for the table or other supports so the expansion coefficient is the same. Within reason, different alloys should be OK, but just one kind of metal (steel, aluminum, etc).

2. The feet should have a fairly broad area, at least 0.5" square. More is better. This distributes the load over an area of the concrete and not just a single point.

3. LOCK it down in ONE and ONLY ONE position. Don't ever let move, even a small fraction of an inch.

4. Then do the leveling and set-ups that follow that to eliminate tapers.

In earthquake country I would definitely anchor it.