# Tooling storage on the toolroom  lathe



## GailInNM (Feb 16, 2019)

I bought an ACRA toolroom lathe almost 20 years ago. The ACRA is a very accurate copy of a Hardinge  HLV. If the Hardrige had a 10-32 hole tapped in the ACRA has  one there also. It is made by Cyclematic in Taiwan. This means that all Hardinge accessories are bolt on so additional tooling is easy.

The right hand side of the stand was mostly a big empty box.  It had supports for shelves or drawers welded in place and two swing out rotating racks to hold 64 5c collets.  Early on I made two drawers that were installed in the bottom part on single extension ball slides.  This is how it looked at this point.






So this is where the beginning of this story starts.  The rotating collet racks had no place where labels could be placed and the configuration was such tat there was no logical way to organize them.  Besides I had more collets than the 64 pots would take so they were stored in boxes on shelves and wall racks.  After considerable measuring and head scratching I made up tow additional slide out s to consolidate everything.  And the finished project looks like this.





I had been gifted several 30 inch square sheets of 1/4 inch acrylic so it became the material of choice. I purchased two set of full extension ball slides so the slide outs  could extend 24 inches from the cabinet and the were made 24 inches long plus plus an additional 3/4 inch for the handles. The ball slides were rated at 75 pounds at full extension. I calculated that my maximum load would be 45 pounds so there was a reasonable safety margin.  The cabinet measured 25 inched deep inside.   I had to reroute the flood coolant line and the wiring from the power feed wiring  a bit as it crossed where I wanted the top slide out.  Spacer mounts were machined to space the slides out to just clear the front opening and mount to the the existing shelve supports that were in place.  This gave me the width of the slide outs..  

The slide outs were drawn up and cut on a laser cutter.  They were drilled and tapped and assembly was with a lot of 4-40 screws. Here is the top slide out.  I contains the 64 imperial  collets at the front followed by 8 oversize imperial collet and the hex and square collet rows. The last row in the read has some special sizes that I use.






The second slide out has space in the front for expansion aarbors and sleeves followed by more holes for 5c size collets and tail stock tooling such as drill chucks and centers.  Also more special collets.  At he read is a set of metric collets.





The existing bottom two drawers were unchained. The top one has tool post toolng with set up tools at the rear,  The bottom drawer has 4 and 6 jaw chucks, face plate and othere assorted tooling. 











Other seldom used and bulky tooling is still on a nearby shelve. Tool post grinder and  5c mounted small 3 and 4 jaw chucks for example.

Gail in NM


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## GailInNM (Feb 16, 2019)

One additional photo I forgot to post.
I engraved label strips with both fractional and decimal sizes to go on all the standard size collet hholes.





Gail in NM


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## pjpickard (Feb 17, 2019)

Very nice, those round collet organizers look cool but drive me nuts on the hardinge at work.We have the toolholders on a revolving tree which works really well. Also I like your labels, I do the same with my drill and endmill storage, very handy to have both the decimal and fraction. Despite doing this for 40 years I still don't know all my 64th's!


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## DJP (Feb 17, 2019)

Another great idea successfully implemented. Thanks for sharing.

I have a couple of heavy duty sliding drawer rails that now have a purpose. My limited collection of collets are R8 for the Mill but the Myford lathe as lots of accessories and custom fittings built over time that need a drawer for easier access. Viewing the contents of a drawer keep the items in short term memory which is another benefit.

Thanks again.


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