Installing a Quick Change Tool Post on the Mini Lathe - Scraping Included!

The Mini Lathes usually come with a standard 4 position toolpost and so did mine. If you have to often change turning tools it can be really tidious to exactly shim the tools to center height and the whole process takes way to much time.
A quick change toolpost was on my wishlist for quite sometime. But given the price of these things, I just couldn't convince myself buying one. I wanted to go for the Multifix style toolpost as they are here the most common ones and for me the ones I trust the most.
I also wanted to go for a high quality industrial grade product (that's really important when having the smallest and flimsiest lathe on the planet ;) ) and landed by the AXA company in Germany. They were really kind and gave me a whole set of their size Aa quick change toolpost for my lathe. They still produce them here in Germany.
For mounting I had to make a new bolt from higher grade steel and I had to mill down the top of the compound slide a little bit to get some room for the tools to adjust in heigth. As the milled surface didn't look that great, I scraped the surface with a quick pattern to make it a bit more pleasant to the eye.
All in all I'm really happy with this new addition as it saves a lot of time and makes working much more efficient.

Thanks to AXA:

00:00 Intro
00:31 New quick change toolholder set from AXA
02:27 Making a new mounting bolt
08:08 Milling the cross slide down
09:02 Scraping the mounting surface
10:54 Assembling, mounting and aligning the new toolpost

[fna-wrightengineering]

Nicely done!

I go back and forth on wanting a Multi-Fix style tool post like this one. I researched all kinds of tool posts, and eventually went with an Aloris-style wedge-type tool post, thinking that it would be much easier to make custom tool holders. But I can't deny that the versatility of the Multi-Fix is super appealing to me, in spite of the more "complicated" tool holders (and I have yet to make any custom tool holders for the wedge-type). The ability to rotate the tool post to multiple angles, and return to a reliable zero is really awesome.

[ThantiK]

Man, you went from 0-100 _REAL_ quick with this one. Just skipped all the steps in between and went straight for the good stuff.

[ferrumignis]

I didn't even know that such small multifix toolposts were available. From a quality manufacturer like AXA I suspect they are the better part of the cost of a new mini-lathe.

[jimsvideos]

Very nicely done; AXA did you a real favour there.

[ChixWoman]

Love your channel. Thanks for showing how you change the gears on your lathe to cut threads. I have a small lathe and could not figure out how to read the change gear settings until now.
Cheers from South Africa.

[angelramos-]

Great work.I like your way of action.Thank you.

[tooltimechris]

Nice video!
The things I learned starting scraping is that the standard sandvik scraper is much to stiff. Mill some slots in the middle will make it ‘weaker’, makes bending it a bit more easy. Which helps with applying pressure.
And the radius of the standard blade is quite large. R40 or R60 is a nice radius to start with.
Imo

Looking forward to the next video

[Carnold_YT]

As always: nice work! Great upgrade to your lathe, but that's also because you took a lot of effort to make it work well. Nice work on scraping the compound, I didn't see that one coming. Looking forward to your next video!

[Orcinusx]

OMFG I HAD NO IDEA THEY MADE THEM SO SMALL!!!! I NEED ONE RIGHT F'N NOW!!! I cannot find this product on their website, can you provide a link to the product page please?

[SuperGleep]

Love your channel and everything you've done with your lathe so far. I'd love to see a video on your tooling choices. What you use and why you chose it. I'm also curious what your training and background are. Very impressive skills I must say :) You've inspired me to want to duplicate what you've done with a mini-lathe of my own.

[lukerickert]

That is a nice upgrade, I have swiss made Aa on my Schaublin 102 and while original it feels a little small on that machine, for this one it looks right.

[scottb]

Great demonstration of a improvement mod to the mini lathe. Well-positioned camera views and great resolution footage. I feel compelled to mention something you have likely already factored into the job, ie. that flipping the bolt end-for-end in the 3 jaw chuck will cause loss of part concentricity.
It is great to see your work being done and it has inspired me to do similar on my lathe.
Thank you.
PS. I like the cariage dial. Will jump over to that video now.
PPS. The chapter marks in Youtube are great, thanks.

[gangleweed]

I bought the wedge type with 4 tool holders as a bargain package from Banggood for my lathe and then bought 4 more tool holders on problem was they are not compatible as far as fit is of the 4 were OK but the other 2 were too loose to tighten up but as they were so cheap on EBAY I decided to experiment by packing the dovetail faces with 1mm strips to see how much rework was required.
I took the path of Tig welding 1mm packer strips along the edges of the faces of the dovetails on the holders and then polishing them worked perfectly and for any future purchases this is the path I would have to take if they didn't tighten up.
With hindsight I think I would have gone for the T37 type sold in India on EBAY which are as cost effective as the wedge type.

[seanwolfe]

Oh my gosh...something not made in China! Looks very nice, I may look about for them...I USE AXA (sized) tool holders, haven't heard of AXA the company.

[JoseSilveira-newhandleforYT]

Superbly machined! Wish I had one set for my minilathe :-)

[imajeenyus]

Really interesting to see this, I had no idea multifix posts were available that small. Was a bit confused at first while searching, because I thought AXA was the same as Aloris AXA but realised it's not 😁

[orangetruckman]

No turning with the new tool post…sad/whining face 😩 guess I’ll just have to wait and see how you like it. Keep the video coming 👍🏻

[guitarchitectural]

This is awesome but oh my god can you tweak the volume for those loud operations 😱😱😱

[machine]

Seems AXA tool posts are really hard to find. I followed your link and the website doesn't show them, or maybe I just missed it. Great video!

[BruceWSims]

Very nice work. What tolerances do you normally work with when using your QCTP?