How Does a Lathe Milling Attachment Work?

[SouthernChap]

when I say walking out, I mean up and down .. not out of the holder.
I was using tool holders. so if I were putting a slot down the length of a shaft it would jump up and ... well you know, you destroy the part, break the cutter, and the utter disgust. My tool holder were 3mt with a 3/8 end mill holder and a drawbar. Not pulling out

Ah right. Sorry, I thought by 'walking out' you meant axially, in the direction of the tailstock.

I've used a couple of vertical slides, one teensy one that really wasn't up to much, and one larger one that was a copy of the Myford vertical slide attachment.

The larger vertical slide did a reasonable enough job, but I was making sure to take very light cuts and everything took a long time.

As I said in my previous post, model engineers (in the UK at least) didn't really have access to milling machines until, at the earliest, the mid 1960's and an awful lot of very fine work was done before then.

Still and all these days, if one has space and money for a milling machine, nobody would want to rely on a vertical slide for their milling machine.