Harbor Freight 9 x 20 Lathe Cross Feed Repair Part

[rossbotics]

Cross Feed Screw Bearing Housing

About 8 years ago I bought this Harbor Freight bench lathe, It’s a 9” X 20” Model BV-920. This is not my main lathe it was just another lathe to do small parts on or to make parts for my milling machine or my other lathe in case of a break down.
These lathes are not of the highest quality nor do I think they were intended to be, There just a cheap chineez machine tool, I have had to make a worm gear for the feed mechanism inside the apron one time, It was made from a die cast pot metal material, the carriage feeds were way too fast even in the slowest ones, I had to rearrange the outboard gearing to slow it down so I could achieve a descent finish on my work, I can’t cut threads now because of that but I never cut threads with it anyway, The belt that you change speeds with is so little it’s incredibly small, It broke once and I ordered one from harbor freight but it only lasted about a year, so I found an equivalent belt made by Gates # 5M730, It’s been on there for 5 years now, All the outboard gears had bushings in them, so I bored them all and installed ball bearings, I have had to do a lot of things to this little machine to make it up to what it is now.
The other day I was using it and discovered a crack in the cross feed screw bearing housing, it was pot metal as well, so I had to make one of those, I made it from a piece of 2.750” round 6061 aluminum.
One tip on making this part, when you get ready to drill the two 17/64” mounting holes use a piece of 5/16” C.R.S. round about 5” long to locate the centers of the housings, clamp one side of the housings together and drill the opposite hole then visa versa. The reference mark on the housing was scratched on using a piece of 3/8” round HSS tool bit ground to a very sharp point held in a 3/8” collet in the milling machine, locate the center of your work piece with the tool bit, touch off and go down into the surface of the metal about .007” deep then cross feed ¼” long.

Below you’ll see some photos of the machining process and a cad drawing of the part, I hope anyone with one of these little machines will find this information useful.

As always thanks for looking and happy machining
Doug


Turned and ready for parting off


Facing off to required length


Scratching the reference mark


Milling the flat surfaces


The lathe this part will fit to


Showing the new part against the old part


Rear view of part


Front view of part


Installed and ready for work


Cad Drawing


Basic Instructions

[charsand]

nice work! my 9x20 harbor had exactly same problems, only i ordered new parts from grizzly. very reasonable, but no where near the quality of yours. i'm sure i bought only a little more time! i had no other way of making replacement parts with my machine down. the best improvement so far, has been replacing the cross feed mounting plate with a 1/2 inch thick version, that i purchased from a2z corp. to help with crossfeed flexing. i agree the speed is way to fast to get a quality finish, threading or general work as well. i'm considering an attemp at repowering, the way varmint al did with a variable speed dc motor. enjoyed your article, and clear photos! thanks charsand

[C-Bag]

Great blow by blow Doug. Thanks for the plans and description.

I'm certain this is going to be in my future too. I'm going to check mine closely and if it's not been replaced should probably make one now before mine goes. I've also been wanting to upgrade the cross feed to a larger dia handle. While functional,this lathe is a little like some foreign cars, you tinker with them as much as you use 'em.

[Captainleeward]

Hi, rossbotics I did some of the same things, but you did a better job making all the parts they really needed some work to get a good feel of the cross feed. Nice job.

[Paul Jones]

Hi Doug,

Nice work on improving your HFT lathe and thank you for including the drawings. Also looks like you made other improvements such as the cross slide handle and easy to read and adjustable dial ring.

Thank you for the posting,

Paul

[DIYer]

Thanks rossbotics! We've added your Lathe Cross Feed Housing to our Lathes category,
as well as to your builder page: rossbotics's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Lathe Cross Feed Housing by rossbotics

tags: lathe, modification

[ncollar]

Doug
Very nice work, like anything from cross the water they could use a lot of love by making and replacing inferior parts. Very nice machining and presentation. you have both my thumbs up. Wonderful job.
Nelson

[marksbug]

great work, I made one for the compound , and added bearings to it. if I do one for the cross slide Ill also add bearings to it.
as for the gears , mine were off center.... witch made it loud as hell. I bushed them in the center. the key way bush thats in them is the issue.( bushing with built in key way).mine is the 9x20 enco model.the last of the enco **** I got it about a month beofre they anounced they were closing the doors( parrent company MSC got tired of loosing oh somany sales for half priced stuff...of coarse the half priced was also less that half the quality on most of the enco crap in the last few years) I ve done a lot to it to make it better, it runs oh so quiet now. I was thinking about a variable speed. flebay has some seweing machine motors with controllers at a good price( industrial machines 700~1000 watt stuff) I dont know what it would take to do the swap,Ill probably never do it. but it was a thought. I would like to make 2 spacers to space the head stock up and the tail stock too....but this thing is so effing flexey I probably wont do that either. Ive pulled most all of it appart when I get it new and fixed most everything and moly lubed lotsa stuff. some functions did not work at all... I did redrill the cross slide base to spread the bolts appart for a more steady rest. but the compound is so small the flex in it is...not good.adjusting the jibs helps but if you really want it to flex less you need to snug up the jibs so there is no movement... Im working on putting a lead screw cover on it soon i hope. I also have a dro with glass scales for it Ill install at some point. but the cross slide & glass scale..well not a lot of room there.I may just use a stainless caliper type scale for it, but thats nowhere near as accurate..but with the flex this has...that wont be a issue..( rimshot!) .the worm gear wasent quite right I reworked it.it may last.so far so good. I need to make a reverser for the lead screw. I did add a start stop button/emergency stop right there eazy and faster and no reaching over the machine to hit it. there is massive build up of bondo&crap under the bead, thus the tail stock dont slide for poop,cleaned all that real good. and added a rat**** rench to the tail stock for quick eazy lock&unlock movement. these lathes are real poop, butt some work and it's ok. my 30 year old speedway( homier tools) 7x14 mini lathe is 2x the quality of this thing... I do realize if I had a 3/4~1" thick steel plate 20x12" and fliped the lathe over and milled the bottom pads square to each other and square to the ways. then mounted it firmley to the steel plate it would be much much stiffer....but I dont see that happening.I thought about a cast aluminum plate for it.I did make a big tray the lathe sits insde nicley to contain all shavings&liquid should I decide on spray lube/cooling. basicly just like the one my 7x14 mini lather has. it was all cut out then pressbrake to form it. I added a 1/2" angle iron end to end on the front side to get rid of any flex there. it all worked out great. I realize I need a bigger lathe, but this is what I could afford 3 years ago...