Mini Lathe Cross Slide Bearing Modification & Travel Extension

[old_toolmaker]

The cross slide of my 7 x 16 mini lathe never had a nice smooth feel to it since I removed it from the box. I designed this new bolt on cross feed assembly to solve several issues. Some of the new features are: (1) added a ball thrust bearing. (2) Added 3/4" cross slide travel toward the operator with no need to machine out clearance in the saddle casting. (3) New longer, tighter tolerance cross feed screw (4) New bronze 3/8-20 L.H. nut with integral dowel and oil port. (5) New slip ring micrometer dial. (6) Backlash can be adjusted and maintained at less than .002". (7) New hand wheel which is extended out toward the operator to minimize interference with the carriage hand wheel. (8) Hand scraped cross slide mating surfaces improving parallelism and squareness to the lath axis. It has made a dramatic improvement to the lathe. My next project is to do a similar improvement to the compound slide. The picture below shows the comparison of the original screw assembly to the new version.