Epoxy Granite Mini Lathe Upgrade

There’s a company that makes an epoxy granite product specifically for this purpose, filling machine castings. The company is DIAMANT polymer. They are based in Germany, but there is a distributor near me in the states, might be one near you as well. Also, I really enjoy seeing how much you are able to do with limited and small tools. You make the most out of everything at your disposal and that’s just awesome to see, especially in this day and age where we are often so spoiled and take too many things for granted.

I've seen a few German machine tools that were deliberately designed from the ground up using epoxy granite. They took most of the vibration out and do a nice job machining parts.

If you want a cheaper, easier and overall better solution to the problem, just take a prefferably polished granite curb (I've used 120x20x8 cm or something like that), drill it, put it under the lathe and bolt the two together. 38 kg of solid granite really does the job.

I added epoxy "granite" to my Sieg X3 mill and my Toolex drill press. Definitely an improvement and reasonably easy to do. I used a mix of sand and gravel chips and as you've found out there is ton of conflicting information out there on possible combinations of materials. Marine chandlers sell good epoxies.

Love seeing all your little upgrades, doo-dads, and tool mods anytime and throughout. It's what precision machining is all about. Carry on!

Hey dude great to see you still pushing this lathe to it’s limits and the ideas you come up with for improving the lathe are great. Keep up the good work speak soon.

Great video! I have been watching lots of videos on epoxy granite and this one is the best! Thanks!

Spectacular! Great job,I did pour concrete in a Rong Fu mill column years ago,did help for vibration ,but was messy job I love you idea ! Congrats and thanks a lot for your videos !👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👍👍👍👍👍

Thanks for sharing and im sure for those who share after you. Your one of the reasons I got a mini lathe in the first place! Cheers!

I'd be tempted to do a pure epoxy pour over top of that grit filled surface. Over time you will get some grit coming out and it could abrade your ways.

Really cool! I have this on my list of things to do on my Mini Lathe too :) Interesting to see how you did it. Thanks for sharing this!

I have a small mill/lathe combo, and find fixing a 15 lb weight (chunk of railroad track) on the far side of the cross slide works very well. Great video.

Gday, anything added is a bonus, it’s a good thing your prepared to give this a go and see if it does work or not and share the findings, great job mate, cheers

Thank you for the video! I was wondering about the same - how to improve rigidity, add mass and maybe dampen vibrations a little. I went a different route and poured myself a 70 kg concrete slab and bolted the lathe to it. Totally worth it.

Beautiful small lathe & I like your work

Great work mate! You are really inspiring me to get back out into my shed and finish off a few projects...! Helpful formula for you, natural frequency is proportional to the square root of the stiffness over the mass. So if you increase the stiffness the same amount that you increase the mass, it might not do much... But if you increase the mass a LOT, then the stiffness isn't as much of an issue. However, you'll still get the same amount of deflection when you are cutting. (Sigh, no free lunch hey?) Anyway, keep on doing thus stuff, as it's really useful for all of us! Cheers mate 😁

When listening to the video, I KNOW you're saying "epoxy granite", but I keep hearing it like "places that can be filled with poxy granite", and it makes the video more fun :)

Nice upgrade, thanks for sharing

Half way through - An amazing amount of work you are willing to expend. //ji

Cut up tires would work too,, I would think,, pry them in, fill the gaps with silicone. 1st time watching. My thoughts are on a lathe that small positive rake carbide brazed tools 😂would help also. Thanks . ( my bad after watching more videos… those were positive rake, and those issues were addressed….good stuff Maynard)