7x16 Mini Lathe [page 3]

Before making the collet chuck mentioned in the previous page I want to make some lathe accessories. Today I started working with a small block of aluminum on the mill. The goal is a carriage stop. I’ve no plans more than some notes on a yellow stickie. That will probably bite me in the end. It often does. I picked a size to match stock already cut in my box of aluminum.

This is the top half of what will be a carriage stop. I’ll post pictures of the bottom half, later. I’ll be adding a socket head cap screw through the body for fine tuning. Since the lathe is metric I’m making sure that everything and anything I add that may need adjustment will also be metric. A side effect of that decision is that I can’t drill the holes for the metric screws until the metric drill bits I ordered arive.

This is what the top and the bottom of the carriage stop look like. I haven’t drilled the holes for the M6 screw that will clamp the two halves together or the M8 threaded hole that will be used to fine tune the stop distance.

A 15/64” drill bit makes a great clearance hole for an M6 screw. I used it to drill through the bottom part of the carriage stop. The top half needs two threaded holes, and M6x1.0 for the clamping screw and an M8x1.25 for the stop adjusting screw. I have metric taps, but they are cheapy carbon steel taps that are hard to use; even in aluminum. I need the appropriate size drill bits to even have a chance of using the taps. They are in the mail.

I turned my attention to a dial indicator holder for Z travel and had remembered that I’d bought a Mighty Mag base a while back only to find it didn’t work well with my other lathe. Works fine with this lathe.