Quick Change Toolpost fitted

I recently bought a OXA toolpost to fit to the cross slide on my main Rose Engine lathe. I had to make a larger thicker baseplate for it so that I could have T nuts on the bottom to locate it on the cross slide table and to raise it higher so that I could correctly align the drilling frame and universal cutting frame. The existing bracket for my CNC motor that I use as a drilling frame was not suitable to modify to fit onto the toolpost and so I machined up a bracket in 8mm aluminium and that works well.

I also bought a boring bar tool holder so that I could mount the universal cutting frame from my portable Rose Engine lathe as it is smaller than the one for this lathe. This UCF has a 10mm shaft and the boring bar holder is made for imperial tools with a sleeve for smaller diameter tools. Unfortunately the large hole was too big and the centre hole in the sleeve was too small. I decided to take a chance and removed the sleeve and put it in my metal lathe and as it was only slightly too small ran a 10mm reamer through it hoping that the steel it was made from wouldn’t be too hard. Luckily it wasn’t and the reamer went through fine and the UCF now fits and works well.

Another well worthwhile upgrade that means I can swap between the two methods of cutting much quicker and I don’t have to worry about getting the centre height just right as the tool holder keeps it on centre.