Help a newbie out?

OK, I'll bite here. Harold I've gotten you know your style to some degree here, and your peculiar approach to iron oxide. I've even come to dislike rust a tiny bit myself.

But this horizontal-bashing has got to stop. :^)

There's one thing that a horizontal mill does not have, and that's a quill. (granted certain deckel machines do a pretty good imitation, but we're going to leave out the top end stuff)

Other than that, a horizontal will do nearly everything a b'port or clone can do, and better. In most cases it's simply a matter of having the correct tooling, or being able to turn the job sideways in the mind.

Advantages of horizontal machines:

1) cheaper. Because nobody understands them or appreciates them, they sell way much cheaper than the similar vertical machine.

2) more rigid. The absence of a sliding quill, and the size limitation that the quill puts on the spindle and bearings, means the horizontal has a far much stronger spindle and far larger bearings. This translates directly into metal removal ability.

3) shorter height. For the hsm-type with limited headroom (that's me, with my basement shop) the shorter horizontal means the machine can fit, where a b'port simply cannot.

4) smaller footprint. There are many smaller horizontal machines like a hardinge, benchmaster, atlas, nichols, etc that provide orders of magnitude better performance than a milling attachment for a lathe, and a factor of two or three smaller floor footprint.

I personally decided on a hardinge UM mill, because of the quality of the manufacture, the fact that it takes 5C tooling, and size fit for my shop. I've since found that it makes a *great* gap bed lathe for turning stuff that does not fit in my lathe. Not a good try on a bridgeport.

Sure it's strange. Sure I have to stand sideways on my head when running it. But with the correct cutter installed, it will eat a bridgeport for lunch, from a metal removal standpoint.

For those rare jobs where only a vertical will do, I did purchase an M head as an acessory. But gets attached very rarely. Maybe once in 50 jobs or so.

Jim

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They're out there, particularly in industry where their features make them very desirable. They're rarer among hobbyists, but several people in this group have them. The universal style is particularly appealing because the table swivels. This lets you cut long tapers, something more difficult to do with a Bridgeport style vertical machine.

About the only thing that's more annoying with the horizontal is trying to use it as a drill press. You'd have to mount the work on an angle plate and use the table Y advance to drill the hole.

But otherwise, the horizontal works great once you get used to the idea that the spindle is horizontal and fixed. Even pocketing work is easier with the horizontal, since the chips tend to naturally fall out by gravity instead of being recut over and over as they are in a vertical machine.

Of course a horizontal mill can use end milling cutters mounted directly in the spindle, or conventional milling cutters mounted on an arbor. And when you use the arbor and overarm, the horizontal is much more rigid for its size, letting you take much heavier roughing cuts, and also letting you gang mill multiple features in one pass.

Not if you want to be able to cut anything other than a straight spur gear. Only the horizontal machines have a drive for the index head that's geared to the table advance, so you can mill a precise helix.

You're pretty much limited to cutting straight spur gears with a vertical machine. (A CNC machining center could be programmed to do other than straight gear teeth, but I'm talking about manual machines.)

The majority of power transmission gearing uses hypoid helical gears, so you really want to be able to cut those if you want to make gears on the mill. (There are other ways to make gears, using a gear hobbing machine, for example.)

Gary

Other than using the mill as a substitute for a drill press, or boring very deep holes (where the extended knee travel of the vertical type gives you more travel than the Y axis of the typical horizontal mill), I can't think of any usual milling operation that's limited by the fact the mill is horizontal rather than vertical.

Gary

If he's going to buy new, 14x40 seems to be the standard size, and is certainly the best value for the dollar with imported machines. But an older US12x36 would certainly be acceptable, or even a 10x24. I wouldn't go smaller than that though.

Gary

I agree with Jim. Its only when inside cuts must be made, that a vertical is handier.

Damn...Im agreeing with Jim again...this madness MUST stop!!!

the horror..the horror..the horror......

Gunner

"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass." --Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

I rest my case! :-)

I ran my small shop for 16 years with nothing but a BP, no horizontal, though there were a few times that I wished I had one. I agree with you, for metal removal they have no equal. It almost numbs the mind to watch a side cutter in chrome-moly cutting a slot 3/4" deep X ½" wide @ 6"/min (or faster). Yep, that's impressive! You can cut metal faster than you can haul the chips off. Problem with that is the typical home shop machinist rarely, if ever, faces a job of that nature. Running side cutters too fast and feed at a snail's pace is death on them. Life leaves in a hurry as they scratch away @ .0003" per tooth because seldom do operators run the machine to capacity. It just looks wrong, so they don't do it. Even some guys with experience.

I'm not against horizontal machines, it's just that I couldn't have produced the work I did without a drop spindle machine. That is likely to be true of almost everyone. To be limited by a horizontal machine alone would not be a good thing, depending on the nature of the work at hand. Doing the nature of work we encounter is more difficult on horizontal machines. Been there, done that. The other rather major problem is that tooling (cutters and arbors) is far more expensive than end mills are. How much money would a home shop type operation care to invest in tools that are seldom used?

I've run the horizontals, including large K&T's, VanNormans, Cincinnati, etc. Great machines, but for general machining I'd never make one my only choice. Reason? Same thing you mentioned. One loses too much flexibility without a drop spindle.

Yeah, I still hate rust. :-)

I forgot to mention. Before I left Utah I purchased a horizontal attachment for my BP. I've yet to use it, but I'm thrilled to have it.

Harold

snip----

Wish I would have had presence of mind enough to comment on this statement, too. I've done end mill work with a horizontal machine, and it's likely one of the toughest of all things to do. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but when I run machines, a very big part of what's happening is closely observed by eye. I do not trust that I am where I think I am, I am constantly looking, with my face close in. I can't think of anything less convenient than watching a pocket being generated on the far side of a mill table, where I can't see what's going on. It's also a lot harder to use your acid brush that way. That's not to say it can't be done, but doing the same job on a vertical, even without a drop spindle, is far easier and faster. If you find yourself cutting the same old chips over and over on a vertical machine, don't you think you're doing something wrong? Spray mist is great at keeping chips out of pockets, and keeps the cutter well lubed and cooler.

And "better"? All depends on the job at hand. Again, cut pockets (or windows) and then lets talk about it. I think you'll find that the only people that prefer a horizontal for that kind of work are those that don't have the vertical and they've deluded themselves into thinking they don't really need a vertical. They're right, they don't, but if they intend to compete with one, it wouldn't be long until they would.

Keep in mind I'm speaking from the perspective of someone that did a majority of tooling, with some production as well. My needs may have been far different from someone that makes a given part time and again, a part that lends itself well to a horizontal. Making jigs and fixtures that require hole locations and dowels works very best on a drop spindle mill. :-)

Harold

I use my horizontal mostly with end mills. They fit just fine in the 5C spindle, I use the same collets as my lathe. One set fits all.

My real point is, in my shop I've got two choices: either a horizontal, or no milling machine at all (or a crappy overpriced milling attachment for a lathe - it would cost me what I paid for the entire milling machine to buy a milling attachment for a 10L...) or the horizontal I do have.

It may sound like rationalization, but honestly I've come to love the hardinge for what it can do. And if I can find nice newish one, I'm going to try to buy one for here at work, as well. And the same reasons apply: the machine has a tiny footprint compared with a b'port, and I have to put a full sized shop in a vestpocket lab.

The one thing I really miss in a milling machine like that is a quill, for drilling. I figured that problem out pretty fast though. I bought a drill press! :)

Jim

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Well, I do have access to a machine shop with everything I could think of. However, I work mostly at night, when the place is closed, and they're not giving me the keys. Also, they usually have the machines set up to do a specific part for days at a time, and me waltzing in there and tearing apart the setups every half hour would be quite annoying. And, most importantly, I have no idea how to use the machines at the moment, and no one there has the time to screw around with me all day, teaching me how a lathe and mill works.

Since I worked at the place for a year, you'd think I'd know how to use the stuff. But since it was all set up for me, I was little more than a monkey pulling levers at the right time.

Anyway, the point is, I figured if I ever needed to make a big, weird part (which I thought would be not too often), I DO have access to any machine I'd ever need. I just won't have access to them for very long...

That's an excellent point, one that may not be valid for those with a Nichols mill, however. Still, I'd love to have either of them. I'm not really against the machines.

Wow! If there's anything I might be against, it would be a milling attachment for a lathe. Talk about a compromise! I fully agree with you, Jim.

I think the real point here is what one becomes accustomed to doing. I might use my O.K. Rubber Welders indexing square toolpost, for example. I cut my teeth on indexing toolposts, thus I am not a fan of the KDK or Aloris types, even though I've used them extensively. For me, the work habits formed are much better suited to the indexing head, and I go far out of my way to see to it that I use one. Only under protest would I use anything else. And so it is with drop spindle mills. I recall when I started working in the mill section at Sperry, there was a Nichols hand mill available for small part machining. To a man, no one in the plant wanted to run the damned thing. We had various Gorton mills, Mastermil (I-22),

9-J, a Unimil (sp), and a couple other small vertical Gortons, the model numbers of which escape me now (and it's only been since 1965! I don't know what's happening to me, honestly!). We also had other vertical machines, including Cincinnati, Van Norman vertical/horizontal (head swiveled) and, of course, several K&T's, a couple equipped with vertical heads that mounted on the overarms and were driven by the horizontal spindle, plus one dandy vertical K&T. At any rate, my time was spent, mostly, on the drop spindle machines. We used them for precision drilling, not only for milling. Before the missile went into full production, hard tooling (drill jigs and more) were not built, so we did all drilling either on multi-spindle drill presses by first laying out the parts, or they were drilled on mills using the screws for location. Almost all the prototype missiles were built that way. This was long before digital readout was available, so I, naturally, still refuse to use a DRO. I've never used one to this day. At any rate, it was there that my work habits were so well formed, only to be strengthened by my last place of employment (a job shop that subbed from the missile industry) and then my own shop. I can't imagine having a mill that didn't have a drop spindle, not unless I had more than one mill.

Yep, a perfect example of becoming very familiar with a given machine, and wanting to have one at your disposal. To this day I'd give my interest in hell for a Cincinnati #2 centerless grinder, a machine I ran and enjoyed immensely. Same goes for a #1 B&S universal grinder. I realize there may be better machines available, especially in the way of the B&S, but to me they represent the ultimate, if for no other reason, I could make them sing. In a way, they became my way of self expression at a craft that seemed to be a natural for me. .

I wish you well in your quest to find another Hardinge, Jim.

Lots harder to drill holes where you want them, though! Takes a lot more skill.

Harold

You'll see them from time to time in eBay auctions, often dirt cheap. (My Nichols horizontal mill was $200.00 for a 1000 pound machine. :-)

Aside from the lack of a quill for quick drilling or plunges, the other thing which is a bit more difficult is when doing pockets with end mills. You mount the end mill in the spindle, mount the workpiece on an angle plate, (unless the pocket is small enough relative to the overall piece so you can hold the workpiece in a vise), and then mill by feeding the plunge (depth) with the Y-axis, and the two dimensions of the pocket are handled with the X-axis and the Z-axis. You can't see what you are doing from the controls position normally, so you'll want to set up a mirror to see what is happening to your workpiece, especially if you are milling to layout lines. But (as has already been mentioned) the chips just flow out of the pocket with the aid of gravity.

That doesn't sound right, somehow. That would make the mill's axis parallel to the center bore of the gear tooth, which would mean that you would be using tiny end mills to profile mill the teeth -- something which could be done on a CNC machine, perhaps, but it would be very slow.

Normal setup for gear cutting of a straight spur gear on a horizontal mill is:

1) Gear tooth milling cutter on horizontal arbor above gear blank. (You use sets of cutters for each gear tooth pitch -- with a set of seven cutters to cover the range from a straight rack gear to the minimum number of teeth practical with that pitch. Each cutter covers a range of teeth (it is really a compromise, with the tooth shape being very close for one pitch near the middle of the range covered, and just almost good enough for the rest of the range. 2) The gear blank is on a mandrel, and is mounted between centers, with one center with driving arms in the dividing head, and another center mounted far enough down the length of the bed to support the other end of the mandrel. 3) You cut one tooth at a time (multiple passes to get to depth, depending on hardness of gear blank and your willingness to accept wear on the gear tooth milling cutter.) then you use the dividing head to rotate the gear blank to bring the position of the next tooth into place and repeat the process until you have all the teeth cut. Each cut is done on the top of the gear blank. (For a vertical mill, you can use a stub arbor to hold the cutter, and cut on the front or back of the gear blank, but you will have less rigidity, since you don't have the arbor supported at both ends, so you will have to make lighter cuts. The dividing head is still mounted horizontally. 4) You may then put the mandrel back onto the lathe, and take a light facing cut on each side of the gear to remove burrs from the milling process.

If you have a universal horizontal mill (the table rotates relative to the cutting axis), you can cut gears with angled teeth.

There are horizontal milling adaptors for vertical spindle mills, and usually they will accept an arbor supported at both ends, with the second end's support clamping to the ram on which the head is mounted. These are *not* nearly as rigid as a proper horizontal milling machine, but more so than an unsupported stub arbor..

There are also right-angle heads for horizontal milling machines to make them sort of act like a vertical spindle milling machine. I have one for my Nichols mill, and it is perhaps a bit more usable there than on most horizontal mills, because the head on a Nichols mill is mounted on a set of vertical dovetails, and can be moved up and down via a lever connected to a sector gear. This duplicates the action of the quill, except perhaps with less feel.

Note: For one-off milling of a spur gear, it is possible to set up a cutter ground from a HSS lathe tool blank rotated in a fly-cutter style setup. You have to have a good eye to grind the tooth profile into the HSS tool bit, and you have to feed much more slowly, as you have only one tooth per revolution, instead of eight or so.

Also -- note that the above is how a shop may produce one or two special gears if they have to. Commercial production of tears is done with a gear hob (looks like a cross between a thread on the OD of a cylinder, and a milling cutter). It is used in combination with a system for rotating the gear blank at the right speed in synchronization with the hob, and it produces the right profile for any (reasonable) tooth count, because of the way the tool and gear rotate relative to each other, instead of needing a separate hob for each tooth count. (You do need a separate hob for each gear tooth pitch, just as you do for the above milling scenario.

It is possible to set up a hob and a gear-driven dividing head coupled to the spindle rotation -- but it is not a simple job.

Note that most of this (other than the cutting a straight-tooth spur gear gear on a plain horizontal mill, is from what I have gathered reading, not form personal experience.

Good Luck, DoN.

In context, "s/b" probably means "should be", not "South Bend", which is likely what comes to mind first in a metalworking situation.

Enjoy, DoN.

I don't really do any precision work at home. If I want to get holes close, I either take the hit, and do them with the infeed on the hardinge, or simply spot them with a centerdrill that way, and then move over to the drill press and pick them up that way. It's not a jig borer but for what I do at home it suffices.

Jim

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