I visited an old shop several weeks ago and was unexpectedly happy to see an old but large vertical lathe was still there and had not been sold for scrap like I feared.

When this old vertical lathe lived in a machine shop in Cincinnati it turned the heat shields for the Mercury capsules.

The original owner was in ill health and in a wheelchair when he told me the story at the end of an auction of his shop’s equipment.

We had to repair several items and pour a concrete mounting base with below floor basement,
and put in Sumitomo “opposing cone” variable speed drives,
but it paid for itself turning large conveyor belt drive drums. and truing large pump parts.

What I did not foresee is that my steel fabrication foremen began using the very stiff and big diameter chuck table’s many attachment points to “pull down” welded parts so they became square and true. By slowly turning the chuck you could “eyeball” the rise and fall of even small faults on big pieces.

Previously you had to repeatedly move around a heavy just welded object with bubble levels and T-squares.