Tee-slotted cross-slide query

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

I have an Asian-manufactured lathe of the 9 x 20 variety, bought locally here in France. Although I’m very pleased with it, it lacks a tee-slotted cross-slide. Having looked at many pictures on various web sites, it appears to be very similar to any number of other lathes of the type. I was wondering if I could perhaps substitute a cross-slide from one of these for the original on my lathe. It shares many similarities to, for example, the Harbor (sic) Freight, Grizzly and Enco lathes sold in the USA as well as the Chester ‘920’ and DB10 models, which are, in turn, similar to the WM series from Warco and the Axminster BV20M. I wonder, if anybody has any of these lathes, would you kindly take the time to give me the dimensions of your cross-slides in order that I can compare them to mine? A picture of my lathe is in my photo album.
John

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

[Michael Cox 1Participant @michaelcox1]

Hi John,

If all else fails you could make one. I made one for my minilathe, see:

http://mikesworkshop.weebly.com/tee-slot-cross-slide.html

Mike

[Mark DickinsonParticipant @markdickinson21936]

John,

 

your lathe looks the same as my Axminster BV20 that I currently have for sale. I will measure the cross slide up for you tomorrow night. My lathe originally came with a plain cross slide , but I bought a replacement from Warco as theirs have the tee slots in them. I had to take 5mm off the top of the top slide as the new cross slide is thicker to accommodate the tee slots.

 

Mark

[BogstandardParticipant @bogstandard]

I am just about to bolt one of these onto my cross slide, so I can put it on and take it off as required.

 

T-slotted table

 

 

John

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Another one here of a different style a bit larger so you can make a choice.

 

C6 Milling table

 

Towards the bottom.

 

John S.

Edited By John Stevenson on 20/07/2011 23:14:47

[BogstandardParticipant @bogstandard]

I purchased both John, to see which one would suit my needs better.

 

The one not used will be turned into a t-slotted sine table.

 

It is looking like the RDG one will fit the Crusader the best..

 

 

John

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

Thanks to all of you. To answer you in order:

Mike

To be honest, I did try to make something similar to your ‘sandwich’ cross-slide – but the slots were at 90 degrees to those on your’s. However, this was before I got the mill and, to be truthful, I made such a dog’s breakfast of it, I gave up and used the metal for other things! I’ll get better, I hope!

 

Mark.

It was your advert that prompted me to have another look at the problem. I feel an mail to Warco coming on, though I’m worried about the cost of carriage.

 

Johns (Bogstandard and Stevenson).

I’m a little concerned that bolting one of these on will reduce the capacity of the machine too much, but is certainly a quick fix and one I’ll definitely consider if I can’t get a ‘proper’ replacement.

 

Thanks again to all,

 

John

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

To update:

I sent an email to Warco to which I received a quick response. Unfortunately they no longer supply lathes of this style and have no cross-slide spares – so it looks like I’ll have to make on myself or try the USA.

 

John

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Made from a slab of meehanite from College Engineering. Note also my version of the ‘Gibraltar’ toolpost.

 

Machined using a teeny vertical slide on the lathe, it would be doddle on the mill.

 

So roll your own, very rewarding.

 

Neil

[BogstandardParticipant @bogstandard]

I think you will find that if the topslide already fitted to your lathe isn’t thick enough to cut your own slots, then fitting one that does, you will be losing machining clearance anyway.

 

BTW, the way I will be fitting the bolt on one is only onto the plain portion of the cross slide, not underneath the toolpost as well, and will only be fitted when required.

 

 

John

[Anonymous]

Surely if the OP has a mill available there’d be less need to have a slotted T-slide?

 

Regards,

 

Andrew

PS: We need a tongue-in-cheek smiley

[Peter EParticipant @petere]

Nice job Stub M, looks really interesting! What size (thickness) is your new cross-slide?

 

The reason for asking is that I am thinking of doing one myself.

 

@John/Bogs: I did a quick measurement on my SIEG C3 and found that the dovetails require say 7 mm, and if using the shallow T-slots Myford style, they require 8 mm. Allowing for 3 mm untouched material in between we come to 18 mm required thickness which is only 2 mm thicker than the original slide which I measured to about 16 mm.

 

Yes, one loses 2 mm swing above X-slide, but I can live with that thinking of all the possibilties that will become available.

 

This sounds tempting, but am I allowing enough maerial??? Thinking of using cast iron and work from that.

 

BR

 

Peter

[BogstandardParticipant @bogstandard]

Peter,

 

I am not suggesting you use my method, just giving an alternative solution, which I think is all any of us can do on here.

 

Like yourself, I measured up my original to see if I could get standard t-slots into my cross slide (In my shop, I have settled on two standards, 16mm & 8mm), but unfortunately, I found that I would not be happy with the strength of them because the top area would be a little on the thin side, hence going for my solution.

 

The way I looked at things, the t-slots will be for mounting either specialist tooling, which I can make to my own dimensions to fit, or for mounting something that needs to be bored between centres.

 

I am lucky in that I do have a largish machine, and thus more clearances to play with.

 

It all boils down to what is acceptable to yourself, and it looks like your solution will be the best, whereas I couldn’t do what you are going to be doing as mine would be a more complex topslide to make. It could be done, but it would far outweigh the benefits gained.

 

Best of luck on your adventure.

 

John

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

Thanks, again, for all the input.

I like the idea of making it from scratch – I’ll investigate the College Engineering lead, (that’s pronounced “leed”, not “led”!!) although I think I’d have to have it delivered to the UK and get someone without a hernia to bring it over!

The reason for wanting a cross-slide with tee-slots is, well, because they’re not there now! In addition, I’m making my own, modified, version of the “Bedair ball-turner”, which I will obviously need to mount on the cross-slide. Other tools which attach there also would be easier to mount with tee-slots, for example my rotary table.

My dovetail is 11.3mm deep x 60mm at its widest and the cross-slide itself is 25mm deep, leaving insufficient room for tee-slots. It’s not wide enough for longitudinal ones, either, at only 110mm wide.

Yes, I would lose some centre to cross-slide distance, but I could always replace the original if things were that critical.

Anyway, back out to the workshop, I’ve got swarf to make!

John

 

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

I was thinking about this sort of thing a couple of years ago, and on the advice given on forums just drilled a few holes, tapped M6, along the edges of the top slide. Using these new holes and the top slide mounting screws a lot of stuff can be fastened down.

[Peter EParticipant @petere]

Thanks John/Bogs for your comments, very valuable. I will keep on pondering on this and make some sketches to see what would fit both my lathe and my desires.

 

Regarding the use of a threaded  hole pattern instead of T.-slots, I have been thinking of that as well. But here I feel that the risk of abrasive and other swarf will too easily find their way onto the slideways, but thanks for the tip.

 

BR

 

/Peter

Edited By Peter E on 23/07/2011 23:04:23

[BogstandardParticipant @bogstandard]

Peter,

 

Another way to keep the costs down if your cross slide doesn’t quite have enough depth to cut the whole T-slot, would be to cut just the wide bottom half into the cross slide and fix steel strips just a little thicker than the T-nut top bit height onto the top face to give you the narrow slots for the tops of the T-nuts.

 

It wouldn’t be the best looking T-slotted cross slide, but it would be very cheap to obtain the same effect as a fully machined one.

 

John

[Peter EParticipant @petere]

Thanks John, that is also a way to do it, but I guess that it will occupy more vertical space as the plate bolted on top needs to be at least 3mm/ 1/8″ to give enough strength.

 

What I really want to find is the best balance between appropriate amount of material to create T-slots and still get as much swing over X-slide as possible.

 

Not being a mechanical engineer by trade I am unsure about how much untouched material that needs to exist between T-slots and dovetails. Using Michael Cox’s description I have set for 3 mm but it may be possible to make it smaller – or?

 

When I finally come to a conclusion/decision I will purchase a suitable chunk of cast iron and machine it using my mini-mill. Then the X-slide will also be longer than today to make it possible to attach a rear toolpost, for example.

 

BR

 

/Peter

[adyParticipant @ady]

The cross slide on my Drummond M-series is 30mm deep.

The slide on my myford lathe milling slide attachment is also 30mm deep.

 

So that seems to be the sort of thickness you chaps should be looking at.

 

total

30 m-series

30 milling slide

 

dovetail

12.1 m-series

9.6 milling slide

 

total t-slot depth

14.00 m-series

11.4 milling slide

 

 

Edited By ady on 24/07/2011 13:41:40

[Peter EParticipant @petere]

Thank you for the measurements, very good for comparison!

 

The X-slide on my C3 is 16 mm thick with a 7 mm dovetail, but the milling table of my X1 is 33 mm thick also with a 7 mm dovetail but here the T-slots use 15 mm of the total thickness (8 mm T-slots).

 

I did look in my copy of Model Engineers Workshop Manual by GHT and found a drawing that described the Myford X-slide T-slot as requiring 4+4 mm in thickness and without getting a written measurement I made a guesstimate that the Myford X-slide is about 25 mm (1″) thick. This would mean that the Myford X-slide is smaller/lighter than the Drummond M-type I guess.

 

Looking at the description by Michael Cox on his manufactured X-slide with T-slots, the slots are made from 6 mm plates (3+3 mm) which seems to work and these are really small/thin.

 

Would there be a difference in strength demand depending on if the T-slot is at right angle to, or in parallell with the slide dovetail?

 

BR

 

/Peter

[Mark DickinsonParticipant @markdickinson21936]

John,

apologies for not posting sooner, I haven’t been out to my workshop for a while. The thickness of the warco slide is 30.5mm compared to 25.5 of the Axminster slide. The Tee slots are take 8mm bolts and are 11.5 mm deep. Hope this helps.

 

mark

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

Mark,

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to measure it up for me. The measurements you give tie in pretty well with those I anticipated with which I would end up. As I reported in an earlier post, Warco no longer supply spares for their lathe of this series so it does look like I’ll have fabricate from scratch, either from solid cast iron or built-up like my first effort in the style of Mike’s.

John

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Drill some holes, tap them, plug with a grub screw or rolled up kitchen roll to keep swarf out.

[jomacParticipant @jomac]

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.

[Author]

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