Milling machine questions

At least it has been done. Don't expect that accuracy. And you need more RPM that old mills often don't have.

Nick

Dunno!

They aren't milling machines, they are small jig borers. Could be used for _very_ light milling, but think in terms of clock making rather than traction engines. I've got one that I inherited from my father. It needs working on to make it usable (I don't know if it was a wartime expedient or a lash-up, but the feed screws currently appear to be 7/16BSW...14tpi!!). It will be sorted once the Hardinge HLV, Beaver mill and J&S 1400 grinder have been done, so not for a year or so...

The collets are Lorch "long series" that are about as common as rocking horse s*1t, since about the only things that seem to use them are BCA's, and Boley-Leinen jig borers

De nada :-)

Mark Rand RTFM

Peter, Obviously, the speed of traversing the table of a vertical miller is critical to success. What you may have missed is that the late Philip Amos writing in MEW used a Quorn Spindle etc in a vertical miller so there is no reason why a DE grinder or a Quorn assembly cannot be fitted to a vertical one.

Taking one step back and using a bit of lateral thinking, any moving table could be used on a surface grinder for a milling machine- horizontal or vertical.

Moving a lathe 90 degrees gives a milling machine!

As an aside, I have already got an E-mail from a bloke already to suggest that he is going along my suggested lines!

Norm

Isn't grinding in the shaper even more lateral? ;-)

Scroll down to the last two photos.

And click here for a MPG

Nick

One could say that, but such practice has been around for over 100 years, as Gould & Eberhardt were offering grinding attachments for their shapers, in 1905.

Tom

I have used an angle grinder in the toolpost of a shaper to machine a drill table that I had repaired with MIG welding. The welds, of course, had significant amounts of iron carbide and were hard enough to smear HSS tools and crush carbide ones. The resulting finish was very good, but there was some damage to the shaper caused by grit getting onto the sliding surfaces of the head. I would not do it again without making a bellows to completely protect the head. Possibly motor cycle front fork bellows could be cut and modified to do the job if better ones could not be obtained elsewhere.

Mark Rand RTFM

Mark, Forgive me but I had seen that one coming! Grit is the menace to machine tools however configured. I was working in the classic basis that a flat table top of a miller would be reasonable protection from falling grit if it was modified for grinding.

However, there are lot of Quorn users( another tangent) who would love to find something as simple as motor bike bellows which would go over

1" round bed bars. I would personally recommend you for MBE( sorry, JohnS. has this) but an OBE- Order of Bike Engineers.

Norm

[snip]

Are these 12.5mm od with a 1mm pitch thread of a strange dia (11.5mm IIRC)? In which case they are also used by my very ancient Lorch-Schmidt lathe, not that this helps as I've found finding spares for the "holes" in my set impossible!

Alan Bain

I don't know if that's the right collet - Mark? Anyone?

However if it is the same collet, I am told that Tenga supply the collets needed for BCA's, if that's any help. Probably need a new mortgage though...

(and no, it's not a Japanese sex-toy)

For what it's worth the following is an advert that has appeared on the Homeworkshop ads site in the past. May be worth following up ??

************

Posted on 2nd January

For Sale Tools Best Wishes for the new year to all. I am thinking of having another small batch of BCA blank collets made. If you are interested please contact me. It is possible that a batch of BCA collets may be made with a boring attachment fitted. Just a thought, and to be pedantic (pedantry in its right place is very important) I am a trader in the BCA sense of having some collets made and selling the surplus to other like minded and consenting adults to be used in the privacy of their own workshops in a non judgmental and all encompassing way, not of course forgetting all those who do not share knowledge and pleasure of the Craft. Best Wishes Mike

Mike Flannery mjpflannery [at] hotmail.com

01903 883974 Sussex GB

.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

Trots out to shed... to get random (3/32") collet and digital verynear.

Trots back to shed to get micrometer, because he doesn't trust the verynear.

.4325"==11mm-ish dia with a 9mm x 1mm thread

I had been told 7/16, which would be .4375" or 11.1125mm

length from end to end of taper=73.5mm length of thread=14mm length of parallel part of shank=51mm approx

max dia approx 15.9mm

Regards Mark Rand RTFM

many thanks!