Lathe suggestions?

[routercnc]

Well I had lots of problems trying to dial in the bracket using shims. Eventually realised that I'd counterbored the bolt holes quite deep leaving only a bit of material at the bottom of the hole and every time I tightened the bolts it was extruding aluminium out of the bottom surface - this varied the height each time!

Anyway, I started again and made up a new bracket. This time it had 4 grub screws to do the levelling and shallow counterbores with smaller holes. I wanted to get each side of bolts and grub screws in a line, but there was not enough space. So I had to offset them a bit. Before levelling I ran an end mill down the grub screw holes to clear the paint off the cross slide to make sure they were biting onto the metal, not the soft paint.

Didn't take too long to dial in left to right:




Instructions say within 0.1 mm - I managed to get 0.01mm so OK there. Then dialled it in front to back.

At this point I realised there was another problem. The slide I'd been supplied had a travel of 100 mm but the cross slide travel was 115 mm. Although I might not use all the travel, it bothered me that at some point in the future I might damage the read head. I phoned Warco and they did say this was the model they fitted to this lathe. I mentioned that I'd be happier with the 150 mm travel model, even if the scale stuck out the back ~30mm and they were OK to swap it (just £5 more). I should get that next week so I stopped that job.

The longer slide was next. I made some brackets with grub screw levellers in:




Clearing the paint with an end mill:






After ALOT of messing about, clamping, adjusting, shimming I managed to get the other end pretty close to level then drilled the tapped hole. Once this was bolted I set about dialling the scale in vertically (slots in scale ends) and fore/aft (grub screws):





I'm thinking about using a cable guide for the 2 cables. I don't like the idea of them being loose and getting caught in a bird's nest and pulled into the chuck, or sliding around on the drip tray.



Now for the drop link bracket:


Last part to make will be a space block between this drop bracket and the read head. I measured 6.86 mm gap so I'll machine something to suit. I think there is a tolerance fore/aft on the read head so as long as it sits somewhere in the middle of the channel on the scale it should be OK.


Then I'll tackle the cable guide shelf and start routing the cables off to the tail stock end and behind the splash guard up to the read out. This will mount somewhere up on the left side near the motor controls.