Step by step method for upgrading a lathe cross slide to linear ball rails.

[tonyfoale]

Part 3 is is now available.

[tonyfoale]

2025 update. Well it is about 18 months since I fitted the linear rails and they have been tested well both for grinding and lots of turning. I am so pleased with the ruggedness and precision that I am considering doing similar to the Z axis. The bed of my lathe is of an open design, as most are, which means that it is rather flexible, just varying the tension on the mounting bolts is enough to twist the bed. It would seem pointless to add linear rails to such a bed. I have thought about boxing the bed in for more stiffness, it would probably be an order of magnitude stiffer, and filling the void with epoxy granite. This would require great care to maintain near perfect alignment as the extra metal was fitted.

An alternative would be to make a new bed from scratch designed from the start to be torsionally stiff. I doubt that this would be any more work than stiffening the current bed. The headstock and cross slide would probably be the only parts used of the original. Of course I could just buy a larger and stiffer lathe but I am limited for space. Anyway that is not at the top of the todo list. I am currently involved with making a machine tool with 3 axes solid granite slides. Watch this space.

[marksbug]

now to add a ball slide to the carriage!!! my enco lathe is horrific, but I do very little nowadays had many more updates to do to it but I looks like I wont be doing them.Ill leave all that up to you. at least it runs extremely quiet, vs as I got it you could barely stay in the shop as it was so much noises comming from the gears.then the carrage travel nut wasent on the same plane as the leadscrew...and so on. when I called enco (MSC) they tottaly disowned it....thier tags, thier colors, thier crate...well I got it the week MSC shut down enco. so they just acted like they never made/sold that junk... never ordered from MSC again. I had been rdering from them for 40 years or more. gotta love big corporation's... they dont give a **** execp for the current order amount...and if it;s paid yet.. they were the parrent co, you would think they would have some sort of quality control on that ****...none at all.