I've just completed the low profile vice for the heavy duty cross slide on the watchmakers WW lathe. I'm very pleased with the results as it is very accurate and holds the work quite well. Combined with the heavy duty three axis cross slide that I've assembled from several perfect cross slides I found on eBay, I can hold lots of different accessories and work pieces.
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| Watchmakers lathe heavy duty cross slide with low profile vice 1 |
I've used three pressure screws versus one, to tighten down the jaws to avoid having to insert spacer blocks on one side or the other of the jaws if I'm holding a piece of work off center. I carefully drilled out the 1/4" aligned holes in both the stationary driving block and the moveable steel top jaw to hold the hardened steel guide pins. I reamed the holes in the brass stationary block using a .2505" oversized reamer and now they slide just right. There's a tiny bit of resistance that allows me to unlock the stationary block from the vertical table and move it up or down without the steel jaw dropping down.
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| Watchmakers lathe heavy duty cross slide with low profile vice 2 |
I've used a Unimat machining table accessory with three T-slots in it as it was quite robust but still small enough to fit the lathe and cross slide set up. I also machined custom T-nuts that were quite a lot longer than the ones that are standard to spread out the significant clamping forces. (I'll add a shot of those shortly)
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| Watchmakers lathe heavy duty cross slide with low profile vice 3 |
I've also made the longitudinal top slide so that it mounts in three different location to maximize the 3 inches of travel the bottom slide has.
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| Watchmakers lathe heavy duty cross slide with low profile vice 4 |
My next project is the horizontal radius cutter that mounts to this set up!
Cheers, Kevin
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