Dave,

Like you I'm new to all this stuff and have had my disappointments.

However I can speak well of the Myford tilting milling slide. It seems well made and accurate and if you don't try big cuts works very well. You do need a small vice to attach to it, and once again the Myford version is solid, well made and fits the mill slots. I did at first buy a cheapo vice from "a well known supplier" before getting the Myford one; it's a poor thing.

The Myford vice and the slide are still available second hand on Fleabay and other places.

Eug

Dave, wouldn't it be better to send it back for a full refund rather than palm it off for peanuts on fleebay and upset some other poor sod with your junk??!!

Martin.

I had a similar problem where I had to adapt the vertical milling slide to clamp to my cross slide. This was time consuming to fit and not a pleasing experience.

I had exactly the same experience when I bought a quite expensive vertical milling slide – I could not find a way of securing it to the cross slide (table) – I solved the problem by making a boring table – simply a flat steel block of approx same surface area ( ~8" x 6&quot as the cross slide and 20mm thick. I hold this down on the cross slide with four t-nuts in the cross slide t-slots and 8mm hex headed bolts going down though the boring table. Metal suppliers will pre-cut metal to your requirements. I haven't been at this for long but I believe that most experienced engineers will have one of these in their tool set – whether home made or ready made.

I then bored the required threaded holes (three in this case) in the boring table to hold the vertical milling vice. This makes attachment and detachment much faster and has avoided the temptation to drill holes in the cross slide table.

I have also found the boring table useful for fitting and raising other accessories – including dividing head and slitting saw table. With suitably placed threaded holes it can also be used for raising and holding work pieces during boring operations (and many other operations) – as it's name implies !!!!

I don't have a Myford lathe but I see that ready made boring tables are available to fit Myfords (e.g. eBay). The only difference is likely to be the distance between the t-slots.

The manufacturer of my Lathe recently starting supplying a specific Myford style Milling Slide for my lathe – it comes with a raising plate very similar to the boring table I describe above – it is wonderful – and it also holds a rear tool post – Christmas has come early !!! But my boring table still comes in very useful for other operations.

My Chinese vertical slide is actually pretty robustly built, although I had to make an adaptor to mount it onto the Myford cross-slide.

I also had the problem of the lower "vice" jaw moving when I tightened the three clamping bolts on the upper jaw. I solved this by making a simple square plate (1/8" thick) with two rows of holes drilled in it (inch spacing) matching the vertical t-slots in the table. The screws that secure the vice jaws to the table face pass through this plate and prevented the lower jaw from moving in relation to the upper jaw – in other words the T-bolts just had to hold the two jaws on the slide face and didn't need to be really clamped up so hard!.

However, these days (and I don't use it that often now) I generally mount a more conventional vice directly onto the slide.

Regards,

IanT

Blimey Neil,

That takes the "belt & braces" approach to a whole new level! I'm also intrigued as to what the piece of copper pipe is for, hanging off the cross slide handle, presumably you need two hands to feed that mass across the cutter?!!

Martin.

Just to clarify my earlier post here's a picture of my vertical slide and, to the left, the boring table I made to hold it.

To Dave's point I thought I had wasted my money and lost faith until I built the boring table to accommodate the slide – I then found it to be very useful.

BUT, ultimately as mentioned I bought a replacement that was made specifically for my lathe – this was a better fit and also has a t-slotted face plate instead of the rather (in my opinion) useless square recess with three bolts holding method – as seen in photo.

My point is that what I thought was a waste of money became (rather as Dave did) a useful accessory once I had understood how to correctly put it to use.

I've been at this workshop game for a short period of time but have quickly learnt that modification is the name of the game – not everything works out of the box.

I'll add the image when I've learnt how to do it !!!

Edited By Steven Kingaby on 19/10/2014 22:05:23

You have to upload them to your photo album first Steven.

IanT

Edited By IanT on 19/10/2014 22:19:58

My bench isn't usually this messy – honestly !

Steven, you'v got to leave a bit of junk on your bench, some get as much from that as they do from the item being photographed. If that bench is untidy, you aint seen nothing yet.

Ian S C

I'll work on it and let you know