Saddle Type Machines With Cross Sliding Hex Turrets

Some of larger saddle type machines were available with an optional cross sliding hex turret (CSHT) arrangements. With this, the hex turret sat upon a large plate, scraped to the saddle resting upon the ways. This turret could be power or manually fed in the axis perpendicular to the centerline of this machine with its own feed drive, while feed motions parallel with the spindle centerline were available either simultaneously or separately with this cross feed. This arrangement made it easy to do step bores, internal faces, some back facing, etc. and the oil field loved this feature on their "A" type machines. Today's CNC machines, of course, have the equivilent of this feature, plus the countouring capability.

It is true that one could combine the cross and logitundial feeds on the CSHT to obtain certain angles, and sometimes we would use a "cam" arrangment to perform simple contours with this unit.