K&T Parts

Meg

When I need levers and handles as such I always tiurn to McMaster- Carr. mcmaster.com is the web address I think. Have a picture you can post?

Bob AZ

I have a friend who is trying to dispose of a K&T #2H mill - weighs about

4,000 pounds - if a friend of his doesn't want it, it's available, and if no one wants it whole, then parts are available - this is a complete mill, probably working (it was working anyway) with all the overarm stuff, and there is some tooling, etc - If anything from this might work with your table, drop me a note off the list and I'll pass the word on. The mill is in the San Fernando Valley (near Los Angeles, CA) - hate to see it turned into scrap, but if no one wants it whole, then what's left after any parts go is just that, scrap. Another vintage tool lost....

oh, to find me, please get my email from my web page, wbnoble.com

Meg

When I need levers and handles as such I always tiurn to McMaster- Carr. mcmaster.com is the web address I think. Have a picture you can post?

Bob AZ

Hello: Thanks for the reply.. This is s special lever which operates in conjunction with trip dogs on the periphery of the table so it has to be the factory lever.. I do appreciate your reply though.. M. Goleman

A K&T #2 in good running conditions is one of the finest milling machines a person can put in their shop.

Gunner

"Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement, reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam"

Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at American University of Cal State Fresno

Fortunately, they can be had cheap, so it's a good idea to buy two good ones and use one for parts, as the price of certain replacements are as much as a used machine. Other parts are just not available.

David

I have three Milwaukee mills.. I have a 2hl universal horizontal, a 2h plain horizontal, and a 2d tool and die mill..All three of these mills are war babies.. I also have attachments for all of them.. Everyone loves Bridgeport mills and they sell pretty high.. Well the Milwaukee mill will fill a five gallon bucket with shavings in a hurry..To each his own I suppose but for me it is Milwaukee.. Mike

You know I often hear folks who have fully equipped machine shops complain about the lack of replacement parts for machines.

What parts could not be made in house? Why?

The only parts in a machine that I can think of which are likely out of the abilities of most shops would be semiconductors and other electronic components.

I trained on some at Milwaukee Area Technical College, also war babies, and used them at various jobs. One of them needed a replacement gear and none were available, with K&T right here in town. We could have had one made, but for as much as the machine was worth.

David

Most shops are not set up to hob gears, for one thing. Even if they were to make one, including tooling, setup and cutting, you could easily have 20 hours @ $50+ an hour, and while that work is being done, those workers aren't doing what they were hired to do.

If all they have is the worn out part to work from, they have to reverse engineer it and guesstimate the pre-wornout sizes & tolerances plus guess what material will work.

I've done work like this and you really have to need THAT machine up and running to make it cost effective.

Parts are made in production lots of 50, 100, 1,000,000, whatever. The most expensive is the first.

David

Not applicable in a home shop in many cases we are doing it for fun. Personally I think this is one of the reasons why the US is losing the global economy battle. Don't repair that machine that you have, scrap it and buy a newer one.

Not really, parts duplication would be easy. You already know what material to make it out of, you have a sample in hand. Look at the books and you would know what the original specs should be.

True to some extent.

True, when I contacted the surly dude who owns the rights for Benchmaster parts, his price quotes suggested he had no stock and made parts one at a time. I built my own X-axis lead screw instead. My Benchmaster came with Y and Z lead screws, but a rack and pinion setup for X.

The window where a machine has paid for itself and is still cost effective to run is getting narrower. We have 2 Mazak LASERs at work with the same 4kW cutting ability. The older one, about 5 years old, has a CNC probably designed in the early '80's, only data input is a RS232 serial port. The newer one runs Linux and has network inputs, USB 2.0 ports and....a RS232 serial port. The old one we use for long running jobs, the new one serves the customers who want one part yesterday.

That part in hand is made of steel. 1020 or 8620? What kind of heat treat?

Where are these books with specs for parts made 60+ years ago by companies long out of business?

True for every job our company quotes. True for every part I've made in my basement.

David

Easy enough to do a test on a piece of it and tell the composition. Or use a steel currently used for a similar use. Heat treat to current spec for a gear in similar use. No real need to use the original factory spec if you know a better one.

Depends on the item. However if it is a gear the simple solution is to use published specifications of common gears of the time. The harder spec would be to look at the back of the teeth and get the information from there. In the event that the wear is bad enough to nullify that you will likely be making a few others to match existing parts and bring the machine into spec. in that case you simply need to use the original for it's diameter and tooth count. Then cut a new gear for each worn position.

However your not making readily found parts in your basement are you? If you are then why?

I look at it this way, just because I can go to the shelf and pick up a

1/4-20 X 1" cap screw, doesn't mean I shouldn't know how to make them. I've visited countries where "automation" advances are made by installing more people with files and grindstones! Ask them about CNC machines and you get blank stares.

They are also superb mills!

Gunner

"Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement, reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam"

Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at American University of Cal State Fresno

Most of what I make no one else does.

To get back to the original point, no company I've worked for would be willing to spend $1-2K to get up and running a machine only worth $2k. It's just not an effective use of resources. You get it running and wait for the next aged part to fail. It's called being nickel & dimed to death.

David

Most shops lack the ability to make replacement parts. The shop is run as a production shop where a high machinst skill level is not necessary. It doesn't take much time to make a spur gear. If you order the same part from the mfgr. you are usually hit with a lead time of a couple of weeks, and a price that is sky high. A screw for a G&L 350T horizontal boring mill runs about 7 grand with the nut and the lead time was quoted as 4 weeks. Our shop did the screw and nut in about 3 days. Anyone know how to cut a 3 1/3 pitch acme lead screw on a manual lathe

Cutting a spur gear is not that hard if you have a dividing head. The math for setting up the hole plate is pretty straight forward and is in many of the older machining books. The actual setup of the dividing head takes about an hour, cutting the gear teeth on a 4 inch gear would take another hour or two depending on how strong your machine is and how many cuts you do on each tooth. it takes longer to order the right involute cutter if you don't have the right one in stock than to cut the gear itself. I have a repair gear to do that is metric 3.5 module 37 teeth. The gear has an inside spline with a long hub. I cheat a little and do most of the gear stuff on our 4 axis horizontal machining center that is faster than doing it manually but the dividing head is on the shelf waiting to be used.

Spline cutting on a shaft is also very easy to do with the dividing head. You will need two ( left and right) 60 degree cutters on an arbor with the proper shims to get your spline width. Then just cut the splines and rough out the metal between the splines with a slab mill.

On the K&T and Cincinatti manual machines the hardest part to make is the clutch plates. I never had to make them but I bet you could buy the sheet material ( steel coated with brass?) and have them waterjetted. The older US made machines are a dream to work on compared with some of the imported stuff. The whole knee of the K &T pulls out in one piece after taking a couple of bolts out.

Here are pictures of a K&T 205-12 that I had apart. The one engage lever set screw had shifted due to a loose set screw.

htttp:userweb.intergrafix.net/amdinc/0714081256.jpg

htttp:userweb.intergrafix.net/amdinc/0714081256a.jpg

All these machines were designed and built before there was CAD, everything was designed on a drafting board with pencil and paper. I have five machines like this in the shop, one we have set up to do keyways on shafts.

John

That is one of the problems IMO. One of my friends works in a similar shop. His entire job consists of swapping out raw stock/finished parts from a CNC center. If a machine fails they call a repair tech in.

It doesn't take much time to make a spur gear. If you

I just grind and harden a profile tool and set up the OLD shaper. Splines, gear teeth, sprocket teeth and many other items are easily cut. Slower while cutting BUT I don't have to order special tooling or wait for delivery either.