As the compound had been largely fixed, it was time to work out how to actually attach it to the lathe bed. The arrangement that came with the unit, was cobbled, kind of badly done, and in poor shape anyway.
I'm not familiar with the various generations of these things, and have no idea if this thing was supposed to be bolted to some sort of adapter plate, or the clamping parts bolted directly to it.
Well, either way, I had to work up something. Going off the cobbled originals, I came up with this- simply a pair of aluminum dovetail halves.
However, I couldn't just tighten one of the dovetails into place in order to clamp it,as the shape of the bed casting made it almost impossible to reach the screws. So I copied something I'd seen on another assembly, and drilled, tapped and bored the rear dovetail for two tapered, 1/2" plugs.
Two 3/8"-24 setscrews came in from the back, nice and easy to access, to push the plugs against the dovetail.
Worked out great, but those cheap stainless countersunk bolts are... well, cheap crap. I can feel them "give" slightly as I tighten the setscrews, so those will be getting replaced with some quality black oxide, as soon as I can dig some up.
And that mounts the compound well enough to use.
I may at some point re-make the dovetails in steel, but for the moment, especially given the fairly low power of this machine, I'm sure they'll be more than strong enough.
And now, a toolpost: I'd fitted an aluminum T-nut to the top of the compound...
And drilled it and the supplied 'blank' nut for the toolpost, for a couple 1/4"-20 countersunk screws. (Again stainless- they were the only ones I had that were the right length.)
I'd picked up a teeny little OXA quickchange toolpost for this machine, which just dropped into place, and only took a moment to get the tool on center.
And there she is. Pretty much complete, minus only the motor.
The motor bearings should be here in the morning, and it'll only take a few moments to reassemble it. And at that point, I should be able to slap a VFD on it and take 'er for a spin!
I'll still need to properly mount and wire the VFD, of course, and there's some minor work to be done with some of the other tooling, but basically it should be ready to go to work this weekend!
Doc.