Added some bearings to my Steady rest.

[cjdavis618]

I have the Grizzly G0516 and some time ago I bought the steady rest through Little Machine shop for it. Here is the link.. This lathe is a 10x21, but the other size steady rests would likely work as well for this down to a 8x20 or so.

I wanted to add bearing support in the beginning and decided I would do it later on. I had been wanting to knock that little project out for a while so I started on it last week. On of the issues was that I wanted to keep the original travel and not have to make new fingers for the steady rest. I just wanted to either put bearings on the tip of the finger or something to support the cuts. I thought about just making a spacer and tapping a hole to stick some bearings on the rear of the finger. But that just didn't seem like it would be as accurate during heavy cuts. I didn't want to zero a part, and then have a screw that holds the bearing wobble or be loose enough to mess up the cut.

What I found was a better option that let me use some very small router bearings and then groove the tips of the existing fingers and just use hardened pins. No loss in adjustment and still works and looks good.

Parts list
3 - 1/8"x3/8 stainless steel dowel pins (McMaster Carr part#-90145A470
3 - Router Bearings - 10 Router Cutter Bearing Shielded 1/8"x3/8" inch Miniature Ball Bearings

I first used my 1/8" saw tool on my sx3 mill to slot out the tip of the finger in the center. Total width of slot was .135 and depth was .400. Then I drilled out the tip of the finger .125 back from center of the tip using a #31 bit (.120). Then reamed it with an undersize (.124) chucking reamer.

Used my small arbor press to put the pin in and push it through the bearing center. I have plenty of bearing surface at the end of the finger to contact the material and it works very well to be such small bearings.

Total cost of the project was $22 but will sure look better on the parts that are machined.

Turned out pretty good for minimal effort on the project.

[Bill6061]

Very Nice. I did the exact same thing last year. Makes a huge difference when turning Al tube, thats for sure.