Perhaps using a between centres arbor in the lathe to do your slitting might enable you to cut as you wish, that cannot be managed on your mill. Just a thought.

Maurice

Will your milling head not rotate 90 degrees? That might help?

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do Andrew – but I needed to cut a few dozen pieces of small brass for a modelling job and made a simple cutting table to do it. It is basically just a mild steel square with a hole in the middle.

It mounts on my EW cross-slide instead of the tool post and has a built in 'stop' and clamps to hold the work. I cut shallow shelves of different depths and widths into the edges for different thicknesses/widths of material. There is are also a shallow 'V' on one side (you can turn it over and through 180 degrees – the clamp holes being tapped through). The table can also be angled with care.. The cut is put on with the cross-slide.

I have several horizontal mills which make sawing larger parts fairly straight forward. 

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 03/06/2020 23:46:06

..or clamp to a small angle plate (imagine something like IanT's table mounted vertically on the mill..). ..or even mill up a piece from the scrapbox to make a holding fixture, if it's something you do often.. ..something like a block with a rebate in it, and a finger clamp..

Edited By DiogenesII on 04/06/2020 06:43:36

Milling slides for lathes are always a compromise . It's often better to cobble together a mounting fixture for the job like IanTs solution. Also make your own arbours, easy ,cheap and the satisfaction of using tools that you made.

I have found this problem too. The arbour is already low profile, the next step is a bigger blade. My maximum so far is 60mm cutting aluminium. The next is an angle vice or fixture. This is very accommodating and I have used it several times. Mill off the surplus to make it square.

Hi Andrew, you will always be faced with such problems when it comes to cutting small pieces off of small pieces, and you very often have to find a way to deal with it. Slitting saw arbors are what they are and have to be strong enough to give enough friction to hold the saw. I machined a small piece a while ago, which then had to be cut off and was faced with the same problem.

OK, the threaded holes were part of the end result of two bespoke nuts, but needed to be sawn off the piece in the vice, but this was not long enough to raise up in the vice to allow the slitting saw and arbor to be used, so my solution without trying to hold it in a bench vice and trying to hacksaw it off neatly, is shown below.

It was sawn halfway through one side and finished on the side shown above and was just cleaned up lightly with an end mill. It was held onto the block with a couple lengths of threaded rod in the holes and just raised in the vice with two small blocks to keep it level and to accommodate the nuts on the threaded rod at the bottom. Always best to plan ahead when doing fiddley jobs like this, like how to hold it and get into cut or mill and can you utilise holes in the part itself, to do subsequent operations, do a dry run if needed as it is frustrating to find you can't finish the way you prefer.

Regards Nick.

.

Whilst you are thinking … have a look at the kit that Myford used to sell

Not sure if it’s still available … it was very ‘well thought out’ but under-appreciated [*]

MichaelG.

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[*] Except perhaps, here:

http://www.myford-lathes.com/accessories36.html

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 04/06/2020 14:54:24