WHAT AM I LOOKING AT

you are looking at a thing that makes all kinds of other things so long as they have straight lines.

you useing a washing machine motor?
i wanted to do that but havent found any frequency drives that are simple to use.

the variable speed is via the twin cone pulleys. and yeah i have lots of 3/4 horse washing machine motors so it was just a given to use one of those.

You're climb milling on that? What kind of feed screw do you have?

long feed is a gear rack with a split gear with set screw that can be set to take out all of the backlash, the rest of the reduction train to the hand wheel has sprung split gear lash eliminators,
the cross feed for the time being is simply a acme thread at 10 threads per inch. in the plans is to replace that with a recirculating ball lead screw. and yeah its actually more rigid than i had thought it would be. long term is to use some plywood to temporarily close in the strut / column then pour concrete in it, then remove the plywood. to both make it more rigid and to give it mass to help with any resonance.

Heh... Now you just need to rig up some stepper motors in place of those hand wheels. :P

BUILD A TERMINATOR OUT OF THINGS AROUND THE HOUSE

battle armour

what's with all the heating elements?
tell me you're going to do something with those

those are parts stock at teh appliance store i was working for. but i use those style elements to build ovens to do thermal forming of plastics, and round elements to set up aluminum smelting systems.