My lathe, mill, shaper etc etc all have different t-slots. Like yourself I despaired at trying to find the right sizes. So made my own for each machine and just bought the standard 5, 8 and 10mm studs and nuts.

Regards Barry

I must admit I did buy a couple of t-nuts that sort of fitted the mill to get started.

Barry

You got a machine, so mill t slot nuts to suit each one Using nuts in place of proper t nuts will give you grief in the long term. Make them, it would take less time than typing your post…..

all my 4 millers which I have had had different sizes. First task with each new machine was to mill sone new ones…

Edited By Zan on 20/02/2021 23:55:21

A couple of coach head bolts may well suffice to get started. Obviously not ideal, but can soon be replaced with the first items made for the job. Just need to think ‘outside the box’ a bit.

Hi Kevin, you can knock off about 1mm of your t1 measurements and about 3mm off the height at the bottom of your h1 measurements, these need to be a good clearance and your s1 measurements will need a easy fit, so you could knock off 0.2mm of these measurements. You can make T nuts on your lathe like the one below from a piece of square or rectangular bar or even a larger piece of round bar and then cut two flats on the bottom to suite your slots. It is also a good idea to make your a1 measurement a little less, say about 0.3mm, so that they are below the surface of your table.

You could also use a suitable piece of flat bar and drill and tap a hole for a piece of threaded rod.

A few of these will get you going to be able to hold things, to make the more conventional T nuts to suite your purposes.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 21/02/2021 09:26:24

Also true if you have a small milling machine; power feeds and larger cuts save a lot of boring work. It's also a good way of using up stubs of material that are unlikely to be of any other use.

Kevin

When making T nuts I prefer light alloy rather than steel. Sufficiently strong and if a bit of swarf gets in the way it will be ground into the nut rather than the underside of the Tee slot. Much easier to dig out!

Clive

Absolutely! A previous owner has done this to the cross-slide on my ML7, and the edges of the T-slot are broken out.

George B.

You only need to do things the hard way twice.

Make two Tee nuts, with as little effort as possible, to secure the vice to the table of one machine. Then first job is to make two "proper" nuts for thet machine, and fit them.

After than you can produce Tee nuts for any other machine, as and when the need arises.

To make aligning the vice(s ) as easy as possible, my suggestion would be to make a "goalpost" fixture for each machine and vice. The only precision bit is to turn the "dowel" at the bottom end of each post.

There may be a picture in my album. But If I go to check, I shall lose this. Hopefully the Forum upgrade will remove that danger.

Howard

Just open another window, use that to check your album, you'll be logged in already. Then come back to the first window to add the picture.

No idea how that happened! I've added a link in the original, Howard's picture should look like this:

Dave

Thank You to all who enlarged the image. Much appreciated.

One thing to add for anyone going to make one.

Having made up the goalpost and clamped it in place on the T slot, take a skim along each side.

In that way, the surface to which the vice clamps before being bolted to the table will be in the plane in which the cutter moves.

Based on the occasional check, it will align the vice to about 0.001" (0.254 mm )

I even made one for my 3 way tilting vice!

Howard