Sounds good to me, but:

• The frame should be strong enough to support the weight and – more important – rigid enough to resist vibration.  Plenty of cross-bracing.
• Reducing a frame’s footprint so it isn’t a trip-hazard makes the moving the machine more hazardous. Lathes and mills are notoriously top heavy, famous for toppling over during moves.
• A frame will lift the height of the controls.  Possibly helpful if the operator is tall, less so if the operator is short!  Tall is more likely, so consider making the frame high enough to put the controls at comfy height.
• Levelling:  before positioning the machines, put levelling compound down.  (How necessary depends on the floor – mine is only approximately level and ridged.)  Make sure the frame is level, especially when loaded with a heavy machine.  As metal bends, might be worth incorporating levelling screws in the frame.
• Bolting down depends on the quality of the floor.   Garage floors often consist of a stone chip bed with a concrete layer on top.  Possibly with a plastic damp-proof sheet sandwiched between. The concrete layer can be quite thin because any weight placed on the floor goes straight to ground, no problem except thin concrete floors aren’t ideal for bolting down. And ff the floor is laid on wet ground, think twice before punching holes in the DPC.   No problem if the floor is thick concrete on dry ground.
• Ideally a two person job, even if the assistant is only there just-in-case to dial 999!

Wish I had a workshop for toys that big!

🙂

Dave

A complication is that the machine will have its bolt holes where its feet ultimately would be for best support so you also end up wanting the pallet feet close by.
If you go for adjustable feet you only need one corner to be such (front tailstock), or two if you are lazy. (both front). No point in having the back ones adjustable as just hard to reach. You shim the 3 fixed ones if the floor is badly out of whack and just trim the levelling with the one adjustable.

Easier to hire an engine crane? ..a lot of places do them..

What quarter of the country are you in?

Most people, including me, put the back of a lathe against a wall. If you have room put it at an angle so you have access to the back. You loose the use of shelving behind the lathe but that can be replaced by a tool store on casters.

My first two lathes were bolted to the floor but my present main lathe, at the manufacture’s suggestion, has sat on ISOMOUNTS for the last 14 years without any problems.

JA

cejm78

What you propose for the mill will work just fine but I consider you are really overthinking things.

Odds are the mill, or at least its base, will come on a basic pallet. Whether proper free standing or bottom of the cardboard box. If is it would seem simple to loose the bottom rails and do a bit of judicious beefing up, eg ply or T&G underfloor panels, on the top, and perhaps an extra stringer or two to make the base bit wider. So long as the lift is limited, inch or less should be fine on a smooth floor, any tilt angles before something hits the floor will be too small to create a tip risk.

I once saw a Bridgeport tipped of a pallet jack at significant lift. The tilt angle achieved before it went over was quite impressive. As was the bang when it hit the concrete pathway. I’m inclined to think that if the pallet jack lift had been lower, little more than enough for it to roll, the machine would have slid sideways without falling off.

When it comes to the lathe the emergency stop / brake bar between the plinths is going to seriously get in the way of a pallet and jack system. Easier, but more ££, would be a small frame round each plinth carrying three jack up castors. I’m unconvinced as to the ability of the chip tray to properly distribute any bending stresses through the middle if only two were used on each side.

My lathe solution for in shop movement on a smooth floor was a heavy duty version of those cheap low profile furniture / white goods shifting doobies. About 1 1/4″ deep with lots of rollers on 1/4″ Ø axles it handles 1 1/2 tons of Smart & Brown 1024 just fine. I got creative with car jacks and pipe through the lifting holes for raising and lowering. Basic structure is 1″ square speed-frame tube welded together with a pair of nylon rollers across each 1″ width. I imagine one of something similar slid under each plinth would do fine for lathe moving. Multiple narrow roller are essential to permit things to steer.

Clive

Hi cejm78, maybe you had the same 18 Tonne lorry that delivered my lathe from Warco, fairly recently. I said not to try delivering with a big lorry, but, a big lorry came, and it was so long it couldn’t even turn into the lane to mine. The driver said all he could do was to unload it onto the lane, but he did use his pallet truck to get it down to mine, however, he got half way down the lane and his truck went into a pot hole, and grounding the pallet. So I had to fetch my own version of a pallet transfer truck, with some bolted together angle irons and casters.

I could pull it down to my area without too much effort, but I then had to swap the angle irons through the other way, (good job it was a four way pallet) and then pull it to my drive, but, I only got it a meter or so across a grassed area, which stopped me dead. But I had a trick up my sleeve that my truck didn’t know about, and it didn’t argue with it.

A  wire rope Tirfor did the job with ease, and with luck, I got it down before the postie came, as he wouldn’t have got past it, to get to mine or my nearest neighbour.

Regards Nick.

On 19 December 2025 at 09:06 cejm78 Said:

.. …For the lathe I was thinking about using 2 or 3 i-beams running lengthwise. Tied together with 100 x 60 x 5mm box sections… ..

.. …The downside is that it raises the lathe a good 200/250mm which might make it uncomfortable to work with… ..

A likely problem with that much ‘extra’ height is being able to see where/what the tool-tip is/doing over the top of the toolpost or holder – having to stretch over the cross-slide handwheel & apron controls and crane one’s neck will get tiresome very quickly..

I think for a 600kg lathe you could probably dispense with the I-beams altogether – the size of tubing you suggest should be more than capable of supporting that load.

IIRC a couple of people here have made ‘mobile’ bases for largish lathes, I think generally with overhung castors cantilevered off the outside of the frame/s to keep them low and stable..?

A better take on the elbow height thing is to pick up your lates copy of ME&W, put your glasses on and start reading. Freeze! The line of text you are reading is where you want the lathe tool tip to be. Any lower and you will end up bending over and get a sore back.

On 21 December 2025 at 19:50 cejm78 Said:

Howard, seems to be similar to the ideal vice height. The lathe comes on its own stand and to be honest, I have no idea how high it is. ……………….

The lathe shown in my earlier post is on adjustable feet, raising the base to about 35mm off the concrete.
Height to centre of cross slide wheel is 1045mm

Bill

In the UK at least, a 440V motor is almost certainly 3 phase star connected. It may well be possible to rewire it to be 240V delta connected, but that won’t make it run off single phase without a VFD or converter or a Steinmetz circuit