Lathe milling slide

[Dave Harding 1Participant @daveharding1]

[Dave Harding 1Participant @daveharding1]

The wife bought me one of the small milling slides from a well known tool supplier. First of it would not mount on my lathe so I bought a bracket.

That would not fit on my tool post so the hole had to be welded up and re drilled.

I finally got it mounted I have tried securing a piece of square aluminium in it to bore a hole out off can I heck get the thing tighten up square. Now today the grub screws on the bottom securing block stripped. what a load of rubbish. what a waste of money. If you tighten the top three securing grub screws it pushes the bottom holding jaw out of square. Rubbish absolute rubbish.

I need a milling machine.

[EugeneParticipant @eugene]

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 Harding 1Participant @daveharding1]

Like a fool I bought a vice that is advertised supposedly to bolt straight onto my milling slide. I have had it four days no way will it fit I can not be bothered to spend the time drilling maching to modify it to fit. The whole thing is going on fleebay I just want rid the whole thing is a waste of money. Junk.

[Martin CottrellParticipant @martincottrell21329]

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.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Martin,

It's amazing how much people's standards and expectations vary:

A while ago, a friend gave me a [new] 150mm cross-vice, but; frankly it was [to my mind] not even worth "improving" so it layed in my workshop unused and unloved.

Then someone did me a favour, and asked that in return I make small donation to Charity … so I gave the cross-vice to the local Hospice Charity Shop, and they sold it on ebay. … It realised £53, and the Buyer was happy.

I don't know the "moral" to this story; except that it seems to have turned-out the proverbial "Win-Win".

MichaelG.

[Steven KingabyParticipant @stevenkingaby28820]

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.

[Dave Harding 1Participant @daveharding1]

Up to now the whole pile of junk is just sat in a bin under my bench it will probably stay there and eventually I will throw it in the skip when I get over being angry at the money I have wasted. But I have learnt a valuable lesson you get what you pay for and you should not believe the description of items for sale on some of the well known hobby machine tool suppliers. because all the items I bought were supposed to fit together like a jig saw puzzle but they don't.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

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

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

It's hard to be sure which vice is being discussed. It sounds like it may be the one I have, made from aluminium alloy. It should be borne in mind that these are made for the Taig/Peatol and using them on larger lathes needs consideration for their capabilities.

I use(d) mine on a mini-lathe in two ways:

1. Tapping two holes in the cross slide to allow it to be fitted with teh table descending past the edge of the slide.
2. Making a raising block from 2×2" cast iron. The bottom is machined to fit the topslide mounting and the top has two threaded holes at 90 degrees to the other screw holes.

I bored out the mounting screw holes in the slide to M6.

You can see I didn't take my own advice about treating it gently.

Neil

[Martin CottrellParticipant @martincottrell21329]

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.

[Boiler BriParticipant @boilerbri]

I am finding this thread interesting. I sold a clark lathe like the one in Neil's picture as" not up to it" I may now be regretting that sale.

what is actually achievable on them?

Brian

[Steven KingabyParticipant @stevenkingaby28820]

 

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

[Steven KingabyParticipant @stevenkingaby28820]

 

How do I add an Image ??

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

[IanTParticipant @iant]

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

IanT

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

[Steven KingabyParticipant @stevenkingaby28820]

Thanks Ian

[Steven KingabyParticipant @stevenkingaby28820]

My bench isn't usually this messy – honestly !

[IanTParticipant @iant]

I'd be quite pleased if mine looked that tidy Steven !

IanT

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

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

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I turned that cross-slide square and then milled the t-slots and dovetails all in the mini-lathe.

Steven, I can still see the surface of your bench, that doesn't count as untidy!

When I tidy up, I count the items as I put them away. When I get to 100, tea break!

Neil

[Steven KingabyParticipant @stevenkingaby28820]

I'll work on it and let you know

[Author]

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