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Well I really messed up this time.

@Redneck_Sophistication

Question - is that area circled in yellow (see below) rusty in a few spots? If so, why? It almost looks like there is some porosity in the casting there. One of the pores looks like rust has been creeping from the outside down the pore toward the inside. See the bottom-most blue circle below.

If there is porosity and rust there, it might more easily explain the total failure of the compound when it crashed.

Regarding the fix - I prefer @Darren's proposed fix. However, there may be reasons why you cannot do that or even just prefer not to. So the following is just for your consideration.

My BXA compound is 3" wide x 1.5 high x 7" long. I don't know what size yours is. It looks similar.

The dovetail eats about 1/2 x 1-3/4 without the Gibbs and 1/2 x 2-1/4 with. There is about 1/2" of solid meat between the top of the dovetail and the bottom of the T-slot. This is the primary section that is broken in your compound. I marked it with a big orange-red rectangle below.


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The purple marks are where I would install some threaded holes for countersunk #10 or 12 socket head machine screws. Whatever fits best after taking into account your compound leade screw system. These don't have to be grade 8 as the threads in the cast iron will be the weakest link. They should be torqued to about 10% of a grade 8 rating so a thread locker is required to prevent them from coming loose.

The green is where I would drill all the way through the entire casting of the compound for two full length 3/8 fine thread Grade 8 bolts with nuts on one end and the bolt socket head on the other. The other bolt is on the other side of the compound. Both ends can be countersunk to avoid interfering with the dial or the busy end of the compound. These need to be grade 8 and torqued to specification as they will basically hold the entire cantilevered load of the toolpost T-Bolt. Two grade 8 bolts should be about the same strength as the original casting at around 30,000 pounds for two. I advocate a very thin film of epoxy in the joint - not for strength but rather to seal it for corrosion protection and to prevent it from sliding or slippage while it is being tightened. It could be applied and cured before drilling.

To visualize the strength of this fix, think tie-rods on medium duty (2500psi) hydraulic cylinders.

Although I doubt it, it is possible that these tension bolts might bend the casting very slightly when they are torqued down. I would certainly never say never. Any porosity in the casting will not be your friend here. There will be a relatively huge clamping force there, however the compression strength of cast iron is 4x its tensile strength so that shouldn't be a problem.
 
I'd use grade 8 ready rod for this with grade 8nuts and thick washers (grade 8 or home made) for the 3/8 bolts.
 
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Good catch @Dabbler. I forgot the washers. They are important. It's better if they are a bit bigger than the bolt head, and they need to be thick. Need to compress the cast iron, not split it or crumble it.
 
Wow.

Everyone thank you for the input. Crazy week haven’t been able to get back on this till this afternoon.

Sad thing is I had installed an oversized, E-STOP on the gear box. I was on my knees right infront of it. It happened so fast I had half a second to realize and it was too late.

I feel a bit better about a repair.
Maybe mill out the corners and add steel 1/2 bars. Run it far less extended.

Cleaned it up. Definitely some porosity or a inclusion in the crack.

I’ll try and get back to this tomorrow
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Ok I’ve got a few ideas.

The compound is about 3 1/8x5x11, I think making a riser block would also be easily doable to make it functional. I would like a compound still:

@Susquatch I like the idea of tie rods holding the whole thing together.
I could do it on one side but the other has the gib and screw I don’t think I’d have the room.

So rod the one side fully, and drill and tap the other side as deep as I can with fine threads to get as much bite,

OR
I seen a technic I thought I could adapt here.
Drill halfway down the body of the slide, then mill a pocket in the side intersecting the drill hole. Use a nut or a snug fitting piece of flat bar drilled and tapped for my bolt/threaded rod. This could be tighter then what I assume the pull out strength of the cast would be and would have a greater amount in compression.

I think I can add small through bolts to the Center section and use nuts and washers as there is an opening underneath. This section is only 7/16, max bolt size? 3/16”?

The gib side that can’t be drilled fully I’m thinking of adding a full length piece of plate. Top to bottom. Closing off the T slot, I don’t see why it needs to be open, this should add some rigidity, with as many drilled and tapped screws as the material will allow.

Is Grade 8 needed for the bolts and rod? Through drilling 11 inches of cast should be fun, cycle through a few jobber bit lengths for that. Should I clamp it to a straight piece of plate and holes one shot or separately in the two halves.

I’ll make another post about the gears



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This thread wasn’t going to be the help thread for my gears but since some helpful members were already trying to decipher my enigma:

I didn’t mention The lathe is labeled McDougall made locally in Galt. A redit users father worked there a long time ago and said this looks NOTHING like what they made. VDM of German bought the company and put there HS on McDougall beds, then imported whole lathes and rebranded them McDougall’s then just dumped the name.

Best guess it’s a VDM HS on a McDougall bed as my bed has double ways they were known for.
ECCB1401-3120-4F35-9033-8C2530685436.jpeg

Gear box, circled is the metric thread coupler. That same shaft is connected to the “extra” gear.
The big brass section is the slide for the dial selector. Underneath is a rack of 11 gears shown below.

Also just noticed that even with the dial disengaged and the metric clutch engaged that gear/shaft drives the lead screw directly.

2A848F92-F8B2-49EF-BE20-AEBB3ACB05F3.jpeg


Behind that is a shaft the E/F/G selector moves, it is these straight couplers (I don’t know the name)

E1146878-F916-4055-8146-06251DADA4EE.jpeg


E to the top in this pic left in the lathe, G to the bottom guess F is just idle in the middle????

Just noticed I did a scratch pass (or is it crash pass) when it all went down.

No wonder it went so fast. Cutting what 1.5tpi??

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This was on settings for 3tpi I think. But I think I had the metric clutch engaged at the time.

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Not sure what gear that means. Or how to reverse it.
 
I was wondering 2 possible things:

1) do you have the room to put a plate of 4140 1/8" thick over the top of your compound, covering it all? you can put a hole relief for your tool post, and then use grd 8 countersunk screws to help stabilize the compound.

2) do you have room for 2 custom 1/" grd 8 ready rods, with a custom washer on the gibb screw end such as pictured below?

compound.webp
 
So rod the one side fully, and drill and tap the other side as deep as I can with fine threads to get as much bite,

I was afraid of that possibility and had hoped the bolt would fit on both sides. Oh well.

Fine threads are ok for a through bolt and nut, but if you are going to thread the cast iron itself without a nut, I'd use a standard thread but with caveats as below. Basically cast iron is a bit like concrete - it is stronger in compression than in tension. This affects both how poorly fine threads perform as well the best way to balance the performance of tension rods.

If you are considering a nut pocket on one side, I'd do it on both sides instead. I'm not sure how to machine a proper flat pocket for that. If it were wood, I'd use a side threaded dowel pin, but for cast iron a flat nut with a washer is better. You will have to figure out how to do that.

It's important to be able to achieve rated torque on the bolt to achieve balanced compression load on the cast iron and tension on the bolts. That isn't possible with a threaded hole in cast iron. A grade 8 bolt and nut is required.
 
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