Possibly of interest to HF mini-lathe owners..

[dgjessing]

Frustrated that I couldn't adjust the cross-slide gibs without taking the darn thing apart, I've just made a special wrench: Took a 5 mm allen wrench and cut two 1/4" pieces off of it. Brazed those into a little piece of 1/16" steel about 3/8" x 1 1/4" with holes near each end (the bits of wrench pressed into the holes, one turned 60 degrees to the other). So with this tiny little wrench I can now snug up the gib screws front and back. Well, still can't get the middle one on the front, but it's better than nothing. ;D

 

[Twmaster]

Pics or it never happened!

 

[dgjessing]

Pics or it never happened!

Oh, fer crying out loud..

 

[user 1842]

Genius in its simplicity...thanks for sharing.

 

[thayer]

Great idea, thank you. I'm guessing, though, that the bits are more like 30 degrees to each other.

 

[Twmaster]

Thanks for the pics. You can do away with the silliness of having to readjust that by replacing the jack screws with shims. Set it once and you never have to fool with it again. Or you can make a pair of adjustable carriage gibs as shown here starting at post #14

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=9016.0

Otherwise you have a good solution to adjusting those screws.

 

[Andrew_D]

I was confused since the OP talked about the cross-slide and I didn't understand the description, but I see by the pics it is the carriage gibs we are discussing....or have I stumbled upon another geographical variation of machine part names??

Andrew