09-23-2012, 09:19 AM
If you look up the elliot omnimill on the lathes.co.uk site http://www.lathes.co.uk/elliottmillers/page2.html as I just did when investigating arbalest's last post you will see a "Factory style" "frankenmill" conversion, the omni mill is an attachment made by Elliot to bolt down on top of some of their smaller horizontal mills.
Over the years I have built a few frankenmills, The idea is simple, buy a good strong old fashioned universal horizontal mill, with all the table feeds and the ability to drive indexing heads etc and then take off the over arm, mount it on the table, mill the end square and drill a series of holes in it to allow the mounting of an adaptor onto which you bolt a Bridgeport or clone vertical milling head, then fit the overarm complete with Bridgeport head back onto the mill, the only down side is the lack of a swivelling mount for the vertical milling head turret so you do lose that versatility over a Bridgeport, but you gain so much by having all that horizontal mill rigidity and feed options, and the name of course;
Frankenstein + Mill = Frankenmill
Regards
Rick
Over the years I have built a few frankenmills, The idea is simple, buy a good strong old fashioned universal horizontal mill, with all the table feeds and the ability to drive indexing heads etc and then take off the over arm, mount it on the table, mill the end square and drill a series of holes in it to allow the mounting of an adaptor onto which you bolt a Bridgeport or clone vertical milling head, then fit the overarm complete with Bridgeport head back onto the mill, the only down side is the lack of a swivelling mount for the vertical milling head turret so you do lose that versatility over a Bridgeport, but you gain so much by having all that horizontal mill rigidity and feed options, and the name of course;
Frankenstein + Mill = Frankenmill
Regards
Rick
Whatever it is, do it today, Tomorrow may not be an option and regret outlasts fatigue.