# Inspirational Reality



## speedre9 (Jul 2, 2015)

I have been inspired by my frustration and fear. My mini lathe has had cross feed compound issues since I tried to install digital dial readouts. After removing said dial readouts I seemed to have constant lead screw and nut adjustment issues. I even went so far as to suggest I could press a bushing into the saddle casting to align the screw. I recently, like this week, made detailed cad drawings to find the interferences and fit issues. I came up with a bunch of ideas, some good some way to complicated for my lacking skills. But, low and behold I was inspired by the act of drawing out the parts to try a simple action, I used a shim!. It seems that the drawings and related cad modelling showed me a shim of 0.040" would do the trick. It did, and I now have a cross slide compound that turn smoothly. So if you are struggling with this issue try the shim method, it worked for me. I put two pieces of 0.020" sheet styrene together with two sided tape from 3M and it worked. Simple and elegant all at once. L.O.L.


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## brino (Jul 2, 2015)

Congrats on the win!  I often find that if looking at a problem does not offer immediate ideas that it's best to walk away and do something else for a while. It kinda stews in my brain for a while and then just might lead to a useable method.



speedre9 said:


> My mini lathe has had cross feed compound issues since I tried to install digital dial readouts.



Do you mean that it originally worked okay, and you only had problems after trying to apply a modification?
If so, perhaps it did not get re-assembled properly........not trying to detract form your work-around, but only in the spirit of helping! 

-brino


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