colchester vertical slide

[Ian MILLARDParticipant @ianmillard76204]

hi can anybody tell me if it is possible to fit a vertical milling slide to a colchester bantam, also does the mandrel have a morse taper bore to accept arbors.

I am thinking of buying a bantam. thanks   IAN

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[Ian MILLARDParticipant @ianmillard76204]

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I don’t think the cross slide is slotted so you would have to cobble up some form of sub-table or drill the topslide. You can but a tee slotted table but it will set you back around £250

 

The later ones were MT5 not sure about the arlier but I suspect they were MT tapered. Make sure it comes with a short MT reducer as that will add to teh cost if you need a new one. ARC Eurotrade do them.

 

Jason

[Rob ManleyParticipant @robmanley79788]

Does the colchester have a dovetailed cross slide?  A friends cross slide has dovetails front and rear to allow the fitment of a hydraulic copy attachment, it just slides on and you nip up the clamping bar at the rear.  Could a table be made to slide and clamp onto that (if its got it)  Rob.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

No the sides are just square so that method won’t work, you can see it clearly on the MK2 drawing below, the MK 1 is almost identical

 

http://www.lathes.co.uk/bantam/index.html

 

 

I’ve just looked through a book on building hit & miss engine models and the guy uses a Bantum, you can clearly see a tee slotted sub table fixed to teh back half of teh cross slide and some threaded holes in teh topslide when its not in use. Question is are these threaded holes standard??

 

Jason

Edited By JasonB on 22/01/2010 13:19:04

[FalcoParticipant @falco]

Rob’s right re. the MT reducer.   It’s MT5 in the spindle and MT3 in the tailstock. As far as I can see from the manual on the Mk1 Bantam, it has MT4 in the spindle, so check before buying.  If the reducer does not come with the lathe they are readily available and not too expensive.

 

As regards the Milling slide, I thought about how to fit one to my Mk2 Bantam when I got one not so long ago. It comes down to drilling and tapping the flat standard cross-slide to fit the milling slide or buying a new T-slotted cross-slide from http://www.lathe.co.uk. 

 In the end I decided  to buy a separate AMD 25LV milling machine as being more versatile and not that much more expensive than a base and milling slide.

 

I will still explore the possibility of fixing an angle plate etc to the standard slide as a very useful accessory. Maybe some other member could advise whether it is possible to do this without weakening the  structure.

 

John 

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