Concrete lathe and Multimachine project

Community contribution by Pat Delany

Some of you may be familiar with my Concrete Lathe and Multimachine projects. I have merged them into a simple, $200 machine tool that can turn, thread and index. It can also  mill, drill, saw and grind in multiple ways. It can be built by a carpenter or mechanic using concrete and scrap steel and is easily aligned.

I know this all sounds far-fetched but I have already posted it to my 7500-member (many of them engineers) Yahoo Multimachine  group and have had no criticism so far. (I do need drawing help however.)

I would like feedback from the community on my contribution.

Editor’s note: Pat Delany sent this this brief explanation in an email to E4C as background for those unfamiliar with his work.

I finally completed a 15-year  project to design a low-cost, all -purpose machine tool for use in shops and schools in developing countries.

The tool, based on a prize-winning but long-forgotten concrete tool technology developed to make cannon shells during World War One, can be used to make all kinds of machine parts. I have made the design open source and have posted my drawings of it on the Web.

It can be easily built and will let a craftsman in any part of the world make machine parts for use in agriculture, fishing, the repair of machines. In short, it could be used in any kind of industry – simple or complex.

The machine can be built by using only concrete and scrap metal and is based on novel uses of technologies proven at least a hundred years ago, in one case four thousand years ago!

E4C and Pat Delany offer more detailed information, construction guides and other resources:

• Open-source concrete lathe construction manual (pdf)
• The Concrete Lathe: World War I Technology Meets 21st-Century Design
• opensourcemachinetools.org
• Open Source Machine Tools Yahoo group
• Concrete Lathe Wiki