Tee-slotted cross-slide query

Hi, there is an American site that casts and machines cross slides for the South Bend lathe which is similar to my Hercus. the Boxford and Colchester lathes, the cost is very reasonable, and for me down in OZ the postage was excellent. Im'e sorry that I dont have the site address, as my computer crashed last year and took all the bookmarks with it,

My other small lathe, is home made, and uses fabricated top and cross slides, cutting the dove tails without another lathe or mill was tedious, and yes it does work OK.

John Holloway.

OK. It's a four-year-old thread, but I've moved back to the UK and am getting things straight in the garage/workshop. I bought a second hand (very) ML7 cross slide from an internet site for not a lot of money and am going to have a go at fitting it to my lathe. Luckily, the dovetail on the cross slide (Myford) is narrower than that on the lathe and there looks to be just enough meat to let me open it out to fit. I'll probably have to buy or make e new nut, but otherwise it looks fairly straight forward. Famous last words! A couple of pics:

The original cross slide ............ And the Myford one for comparison, sizewise.

John

John Ward will make T slotted cross slides for a number of lathes. Not sure about chinese though.

http://www.latheparts.co.uk/

 Other bits and pieces for them too.

whoops forgot to add the link.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 31/10/2015 17:05:11

John W1,

Thanks for the link to latheparts. I have already had a look on there so see if there was anything suitable for my needs. Unfortunately not. And anyway, as I said in a previous post, Id rather like to try to do it myself - just for the hell of it. Well, as I'm starting off with a Myford slide, I'm halfway there, relieving me of the tedious chore of hacking massive amounts of cast iron from a rectangular lump to form the dovetail and tee slots. Cheating, in other words

I'll keep a track on progress through my albums,but don't expect a quick job.

John

Hello John

I too am in the rather lonely position of machining in France - in Picardie.

I make stuff for my vintage Austin Seven projects.

I run a Chester Super B lathe bought locally, a Warco Economy mill and a Rexon drill press.

If you wanted to contact me and occasionally discuss issues I should be delighted.

My email is [email protected]

Good luck with the cross-slide.

Martyn

You could always use one of the tee slotted sub tables from RDG or similar suppliers. Just cut it in half and it would probably be about the right size. Two people could split the cost and make one each.

Boxford have another way of doing it that could be adapted to other lathes. They call it a boring table and it fits in place of the compound slide.

Handy in some ways as it gives more space due to the compound slide no longer being there and retains the swing when it's not fitted.

Lathe parts manufacturers things to order by the way. For a cross slide he would want to know the width across the gibs etc.

John

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Martyn,

Thanks for the offer. Happy to chat to anyone, but, like I said above, I'm back in the UK now, having retired to Normandie thirteen years ago. Good luck machining in France. I found the most difficult thing to source was materials, followed by tooling such as milling cutters and the like at sensible prices. Ebay to the rescue!!

Bon chance,

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 01/11/2015 12:23:25

OK. Basically, I bottled it! I had got to the stage where I needed to decide how to mount the topslide onto the modified Myford cross slide. This would have meant a lot of irreversible surgery to the topslide in order to retain the ability to rotate it through 360°, a facility I was keen to keep. So, back to square one and a detailed comparison between the two cross slides showed that there was precious little difference between the two with regards to basic dimensions. I therefore concluded that it was perfectly feasible to mill some tee slots into the original cross slide without significantly weakening its structure. After a lot of careful measuring and re-measuring, I decided on a specific layout and taking a deep breath, proceeded to cut metal. The result is shown below:

Last tee slot cut ......... 

And re-fitted to the lathe .......

Add one topslide, adjust the gibs and lubricate thoroughly ......

The slots aren't symmetrical, neither are they to Myford sizes, but are to my metric specification and, as I have made or intend to make, all my own lathe accessories, they suit me just fine.

On to the next project - modifying the ball-turning fixture to mount on the "new" cross slide!

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 11/11/2015 16:30:45 to try to alter picture layout - unsuccessfully!

Edited By John Hinkley on 11/11/2015 16:34:18

Edited By John Hinkley on 11/11/2015 16:34:47