I've got two old lathes, both about 80 years old. They have acquired excessive backlash over their lifetimes (rather than having it factory-fitted) but I think I'll try your fix. At worst I can put the original parts back on and I'll have learnt something. Thanks for posting this.

Brilliantly done, all on the lathe. Very impressive and works a treat!! Thanks for sharing this with us!!

Well done, sir. Setting aside the discussion over anti-backlash nuts, the bigger impact of this vid is showing how you can make quality parts with inexpensive hobbyist machinery. Lots of great work holding and tool holding tips in your vids. I'm a big fan.

Some pretty crazy positioning and machining on the lathe! Thank you sir, great work!

I've seen so many machining videos that it would make your head spin, but this video is absolutely incredible. Really well done!

Turned out excellent. I did a similar project to my Grizzly gunsmithing lathe about a decade ago. I simply bought a replacement nut and then cut it in half and inserted a spring of sufficient strength in between the two halves. The spring was held sandwiched in between the two halves of my new lead-screw-nut by four long-enough screws in each corner of the lead-screw nut. It too was adjustable but, my method was way harder to adjust than your design. I did it that way because I knew I could finish it in a day or less. It worked well for me though. I just couldn't afford to have my lathe down for any length of time.

Those were done pretty inventive setups there my man.... I loved the chamfers

Really well executed! Super project. Haven't seen this way of making an adjustable nut yet. I definitely keep this in mind. Thanks for sharing!

Chamfering a square block in the 4 jaw 👌 salute you there sir, love seeing a new trick

Excellent work on the part and the video, thank you!

It’s people like you that make people like me, just like you. This is an awesome mod, specially for the Mini-lathe. Though, I would think with a bit of measuring it can be modified to fit any lathe that needed this. Great job.

Very nice - and a wonderful example of how to use a lathe as a milling machine!

Like many here i absorb shit loads of shop & turning videos but I love lathe improvement, attachments, and upgrades the best. This project really shines because who the hell wouldn't love to reduce backlash to an absolute minimum? It's truly a rhetorical question. I'm going to investigate if I can adapt your excellent design to my old SB-H10 and Logan 920. Thanks for the very enjoyable and well done video. You did it with no monologue, yet the vid is clear enough to not suffer from its absence. Thanks! Wakodahatchee Chris

Ten years ago I changed my minilathe to a brand new Chinese lathe with 255kg and 1,3 kw after I improved everything you could and It became a quite precise minilathe I sold it to a professional Vespa restaurator and he uses it to improve the cylinder and other parts of the italian motorbikes . I also changed the Nut into a sliced Nut with screws you could get the backlash down to a minimum...

Skill is the great equalizer. Congratulations to you sir.

All done on a lathe. Who needs a mill when you have determination. Well done.

Main take away here is how well you used what little you had, most people think you need machining equipment 100 times larger than what you have to make anything what we see you make in this video.

I've never seen this design, but I liked it a lot, thanks for sharing

Interesting design. I've been able to remove almost all the backlash in my mini-lathe by cutting a slot longways on the underside of the nut and squeezing it slightly in the vice. (Similar to the approach in Taig mill). But eventually this will wear, at which point I may try something like this.

Nice work. I'll have to see if I can apply this to my old Logan. Thanks for sharing.

A good way to machine a complicated part if you don't have a milling machine. The nut appears to work very well.

Great job. I have one suggestion, and that is to spring load the 4 outward facing screws. It might make the final slack adjustment easier.

really good solution. had fun watching

Continue making Chinese lathe upgrade videos . I have also similar lathe

Interesting way to do an adjustable backlash nut. I normally make a nut and bolt with a dowel an end plate on it then cut the thread. Then after this just take out the backlash with a shim and or grind. The problem with a rotating adjustment is it could move and lock it up. Its only a little lathe so it should be ok.

You could also have taken the existing spindle nut, drilled two holes axially for hard pins (3 mm?) and then cut the nut in half so that you have two short nuts. Mill off both parting surfaces at 5 degrees and make a wedge at 10 degrees with a hole in the middle that is several millimetres larger than the spindle. If you then make a thread on the slide between the two holes for fastening the threaded nut so that you can press on the wedge with a worm screw, you could also eliminate the thread play in this way.

Wow just fantastic workmanship

Incredible good work, I have a similar lathe but by far not your skills! I had to mount a caliper... Congratulations!

Very nice work on the parts.

nice job did you lose any cross slid travel ? with the longer nut ? its open on the one end and from the look of the org. the mounting bolt hole to the front end looks about the same so ?

Excellent and innovative.

As usual you do really nice work. You got the backlash down to less than 0.001". Of course short of going to a ball screw, no one can eliminate backlash 100%, but instead only come close. It's why we always approach our work in such a way as to remove the backlash first. Even the most precise CNC operations are programmed to approach the work in such a way as to remove backlash.

A great video showing lots of interesting techniques 😯 ( whether you want backlash reduced or not 🤞) K

Great project very well presented would love more detail so i could use for my 12 x 36 lathe Thankyou

Can you tell me what size is the mandrel used for the grinding/cutting discs and where you got it if possible. Thanks

Great job. Thanks for sharing.

7:05 well identified! the parting issue of the mini lathe. Seems like you've done quite a bit work with it to fix it that way. In general I'd rather install a ballscrew than this one, and make a new crossslide.

Need to add a Belleville disc spring between the backlash screw and the body...

I think having minumum backlash is important especially on small machine or heavy cuts or turning square and etc.Would resist the tool getting pulled in especiallly your machine tool does not have sufficient gib lock or you are using that one axis for cutting.

Impressive work, keep it up

You are so amazing 👍

Nice! Thanks for sharing, Cheers

I keep thinking there should be a way to make the Acme cross slide nut like an ER32 collet and holder, with a tension ring just behind the handwheel and dial. You could just turn it by hand to remove backlash.

Quedo muy bien la Tuerca Cuadrada, Medio Decimo y lo vas Registrando !!

Would it also work with a spring that pushes the cariage towards the handle ? Hmm I guess not because you could only cut properly in one durection.

It's about time someone came up with an answer to backlash. Instead of just living with it or recutting new threads.

Top-Job, Sir💪👌

other than the joy of 'doing it yourself', is there any disadvantage in using an acme tap and die? Nice job, BTW

really nice work, great is this ProCraft VMM800?

The nut on the cross slide has backlash adjustment built in, using the set screw between the 2 attachment screws you can take out the backlash by snugging up one end and turning the set screw in until the backlash is gone, then tightening the attachment screws

Do you have a video on how to turn short round stock ? Like very short, 1/2 inch short, diameter fits inside the jaws

You're a lathe master :)

Well done, brilliant, better than mine, will copy, cheers

Respekt! Tolle Arbeit

Wonderful, veri nice Brainstorming, very good Job.

Excellent, the part I don't understand is how you can do all this work and not get your hands soiled? 'just saying'

I can't begin to do precision work like the cuts you make. I have a cheap Jet lathe which has some kind of play which can make cutting tools dig in even on pretty small cuts.

Great job

Nice video shot, thanks for sharing it :)

I know you most hear this a lot, but you are fkn AWESOME!!!

I dunnoI watched this entire video and I still don't know what an Anti-backlash nut Chinese guy looks like! Humm, maybe I missed something. I enjoyed the video. Thank you, Sir!

Nice job!

You perform as much mill work on the lathe as you do lathe work. Impressive.

Although, wonderfully machine and a clever design.. it appears to me, that it is more of a slipper clutch or break-over friction clutch then a system that is designed to control lash gap in a controllable measure? Perhaps, maybe I missed something. But, yes, modifying this dinky little machines is so much fun, and affordable. I enjoy your content.

​​Bit late to the party, but I thought I should say that whilst this is a great video (I've subbed on the basis of this) and the content creator shows some great ideas, the way they hold milling cutters in the lathe chuck is a definite no-no. If you want to use the lathe as a mill (and if you don't have a mill, you should definitely give it a go; affordable benchtop mills are a relatively recent innovation and model engineers have been using their lathes as very workable makeshift mills for a long while), you should use a collet chuck. ER32 is a good choice; there are lots of reasonably priced ER32 collet chucks available for mini lathes. The reason for this is that milling cutters have hardened shanks, and lathe chucks have hardened jaws and so the jaws can't really grip the cutters shank sufficiently well. That lack of grip will, sooner or later, lead to the cutter slipping in the chuck jaws. You probably can get away with it for very light cuts but sooner or later it will probably bite you in the rear. At best you'll damage your cutter's shank, or the workpiece or both. At worst, because milling cutters tend to grab at the material, the tool could slip out of the jaws completely and end up damaging you! The only safe use of a milling cutter held in a lathe's chuck (ot a Jacobs style chuck too, for that matter), if you absolutely don't have a choice, is using what is known as a 'slot drill' to either flatten the cone out of a blind hole drilled with a twist drill, or to make the flat bottomed blind hole in the first place. That's okay as the force back towards the chuck will prevent the cutter from ever pulling out. tl;dr: don't put milling cutters in lathe chuck jaws, get a reasonably priced ER collet chuck and a few collets in sizes you're most likely to use. 😉

wspaniale robota wykonana znakomicie jestem pełen podziwu dla ciebie 👍👍

Nice design.

excelente trabalho, parabens

so how much would you sell that part to stores for? $$$

Ultimately the screw will wear more in the region of the most frequent travel and then you have to leave some backlash anyway, otherwise the screw will bind up at either end. You must still develop the habit of making the last adjustment of the cross slide against the reactive force of the tool pressure.

Bravo........a ball screw......cheers

Good job👍👍

It was enough to make a pressure on the side of the guide to prevent the knife from being pulled in when cutting

Awesome fix, would you sell that nut?

Wonder full job

Should you not have machined the parts before throwing away the follower nut? ;-}

Sehr schön gemacht. Das Umkehrspiel ist immer ein Problem, weil der Drehstahl oder der Fräser ich auch in die Maschine hineinziehen kann. Sie wissen nie wann und wieviel das Werkzeug gezogen wird. An der Drehmaschine tragen sie dadurch schnell zuviel ab, bei der Fräsmaschine zerbrechen sie das Werkzeug und mehr. Einstellbare Spindelmuttern mit Federn lösen dieses Problem nicht. Es muss ein fest einstellbare Spindelmutter sein, deren Gewindeflanken auf beiden Seiten tragen.

Do you sell these? i would love to buy one

instant sub. but also, perhaps a spring system might have been better? that way you'd be able to use less pressure (less wear on the nut), it wouldn't come loose with vibrations, and it would work for a lot longer without maintenance because as the nut would get pushed forward as it wears.

How much would you charge me to make this exact same thing? I’ll pay for the material, labor, and shipping up front friend….

What stops the sleeve with the two tapers from screwing toward the main nut, undoing the "anti backlash" you achieved by "unscrewing" the sleeve away from the nut?

Vert clever design. I like it.

Гарна робота !!!Респект!!!!!

It was much easier, just give the existing nut a saw slot through the screw thread and then press with a screw that opens the saw slot, you have made a perfect backlash free nut that you can adjust. Costs you nothing and 10 minutes of work.

Are you making these to sell?

Nicely done, btw your lathe is so shiny do you wipe it every day 😇

Отличная идея, скоро себе сварганю такую гайку, прижимные планки для продольной подачи уже сделал работают отлично, у меня вопрос по рпижимным планкам с клиньями, тебе не приходилось шлифовать станину снизу где скользят клинья или мне так повезло с моим *джетом 7*? Или эти станки все с одинаковыми болячками?

Very Good

Interesante el video, me gusto.

Çok güzel bir paylaşım olmuş 👍🤝🇹🇷

Was the nut made from brass or some bronze alloy?

I'm surprised if you take all the backlash out of the nut that it will even let you turn the handle at all without a lot of torque. It will not take long to wear it till you have backlash again.

хорошая гайка👍 только вот если ещё масленку туда приспособить, то она будет жить и жить✌

Nice project! But on a manually operated machine backlash is not really a problem as you compensate for it by always feeding in one direction and make sure to take up any backlash before making a cut. And a anti backlash nut will just wear faster until it has just as much backlash again as the old one.

Great work, but why remove backlash on conventional lathe ? I work with lathes and mills (conventoional) and backlash is never a problem.

Какую передачу использовали, чтобы нарезать трапецидальную резьбу???

You should really use zero raked tools on brass, it makes a huge difference, backlash isn't much of a problem as your tooling does dive into the backlash anymore.

*СУПЕР ГАЙКА или ЛЮФТ в 100ку* 😜

Impressive. Most impressive. Darth Vader.

Why make the second thread as an insert? You could have just made a threaded block, then cut it in half and tightened the 2 halves together with the 4 screws. Or 2 screws.