Adapting a dovetail slide

Hi all

I'm working on adapting a dovetail slide from a lathe turret to the front of my van Norman mill, with the idea of mounting a high speed head to it. The dovetail slide will hopefully provide quill-like functionality that I don't have on the van Norman currently.

I've attached a picture of the turret I'm adapting. It's very nicely made, and has almost no wear on it. I'm looking for advice on the best way to add a return spring and a gib lock.

For the return spring, I'm thinking I can machine an adapter to mimic the recess in a bridgeport's head casting, then use a regular bport clock spring to provide the return mechanism. I'm definitely open to suggestions if there's a better way.

For the position lock, I had thought about drilling and tapping through the casting and inserting a lock bolt to bear on the gib. But, it's not really a gib - it's more of a dovetail insert, and is designed to be bolted down with the 4 bolts in the top once any play is taken up. The other side is the same. So I don't think that would work... Any other ideas?

For anyone who's wondering why I'm doing this: mostly just because I can, and I've got some miscellaneous parts that look like they could fit together nicely...

Thanks in advance

Lee

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Old tech often still works. A hundred plus years ago, many drill presses had a chain, pulley and weight to return the quill. The return force is nearly constant and the weight is easily adjusted to give the desired feel.

Gas springs and tool balancers can also work, but they are not as flexible on force.

Larry

A good way to do a pretty close to uniform force and easily adjustable return is a gas cylinder with a relatively large remote reservoir. The reservoir being large relative to cylinder volume will keep the force relatively constant and pressure in the reservoir can be adjusted to alter the desired force level.

A very long coil of clock style spring can accomplish most of the same though as long as it has some manner of preload adjustment.

As far as clamping with that setup, perhaps you could cut the "dovetail insert" so that both ends are held captured with two of the four bolts each, and cut in such a way that you have a short loose piece in the center just large enough to act as your lock. Drill and tap a hole to push only on that short center piece.