Actually, this brings to mind an old book and a concept which I wanted to act on when I was younger — making a machine shop more-or-less from scratch.
Had a copy of Vol. 2 of the “Gingery Books”:
In short, the concept is that the lathe is the only tool in a machine shop which can duplicate itself, so one uses investment casting to make a lathe, then use the lathe to improve itself (or make a nicer one), then make the other tools needed for a complete machine shop.
More of a hand tool guy myself, so my one tool design is far simpler:
(which is listed at:
along w/ some other plans — I’d love to fill out all the ones which it would make sense for us to make on our machines).
I guess we need a second page or a section on machine tools which are reasonable to make on a Nomad/Shapeoko — we did allude to this idea on the 3D printer page: Shapeoko CNC Router, Rigid, Accurate, Reliable, and Affordable and there are a few more at: Shapeoko CNC Router, Rigid, Accurate, Reliable, and Affordable