Cross-Slide Vise (Again)

I mentioned last September that I had bought a cross-slide vise at Harbor Freight which had dials allowing you to move the X and Y directions in .1 mm increments, but I was a bit disappointed--it was at least 3% inaccurate. This was so far from accurate that it was hardly worth messing with.

Well, I was looking at it yesterday, and I suddenly noticed some screws on the side of both the X and Y stages--and decided to play with them a bit. They tighten up the play in both directions--and improve the accuracy.

When I was done fiddling, the X axis is now very accurate. I made 30 turns of the crank, and then measured the movement with a micrometer. It should have been 90 mm. It came to 89.93 mm--which is .2% accurate. There's more error in how I positioned the micrometer. The Y axis isn't quite as good, but 30 turns should have been 90 mm. It came to 89.45 mm--or .6% accurate.

I am now using this not just as a coarse positioning device, but as a sufficiently accurate method of positioning objects within a hundredth of an inch!