Looking for t-nuts

[ChazzC]

Make em! We're machinists after all.

I understand that there can be ac chicken/egg problem: how do you mount the vise when you are making your t-nuts? That's where the carriage bolts might come into play. Grind or file flats on the sides of the heads so they fit your t-slots. But once you rig something temporary, making a set of t-nuts from a length of bar is a very good first milling project. Usually you take a bar say 4-5" long (for four t-nuts), and mill the correct slot profile on it. Then drill and tap the holes and finally cut the four nuts apart using a bandsaw or hacksaw. Cleaning up the cut ends is optional; the mill can do that too.

One advantage of making your own is that you can fit them to your machine slots and you get to choose the stud threads. For example I use 3/8-16 on my 3-in-1. You can get 3/8-16 all-thread at home depot (the crappy grade 2 stuff, but good enough), or McMaster has what they call B7 grade threaded rod (similar to grade 5 bolts) or grade 8. You can make a wide variety of different stud lengths cheaply with nothing more than a hacksaw.

That's how I made these:



I needed slightly smaller nuts for my 4 x 5 Tilting Table, and since I would be using smaller toe clamps I made them with both 10-32 & 1/4-20 tapped holes (not fully threaded, but as noted can also peen the bottoms of the holes like the commercial ones usually are). 12L14 bar (sliced from 1-1/8" x 1-1/8" x 12" bar I found on eBay for a great price); made a total of six (yes, drawing says cut into four, but I wanted to save as much of the full-size bar stock as possible & I only needed 4 plus a couple of spares) and sawed them apart & milled to length after milling the profile. Also blacked with Brownell's Oxpho Blue. They also fit the Mini-Mill table slots for when I want to use my 1/4-20 Aluminum toe clamps there: