Slideway Grinding

Just a bit of 'customer feedback' - about a month ago somebody was asking about getting the slideways of their mill reground. At about the same time an advert appeared in Model Engineer, for the first time ever, I think, offering that same service.

To cut a long story short, I've long needed the slideways of my fifty year old Elliot Omnimil to be reground so I decided to give myself an early birthday present and followed up the ad. The work's just been completed and I'm delighted with the results. I had most of the slideways, dovetails and badly worn gibs reground and, where necessary, built up with Turcite.

The work cost £400, not cheap, but small companies prepared to do this type of work for model engineers with old machines and limited hobby funds are fast disappearing and my old machine now feels as good as new again. In reality, it's probably better since the machine was hand rebuilt by an expert with thirty five year experience in the business.

The work was done by Brian Caddy, in Nuneaton, on 07775 683 363, he and also does work on ML7s etc. Highly recommended. --

Chris Edwards (in deepest Dorset) "....there *must* be an easier way!"

Reply to
Chris Edwards
Loading thread data ...

That sounds more like a bargain to me than being expensive or not cheap. Here, I asked for a dovetail to be regrinded. 600mm length *without* the mating part. Just a drop-it-on-the-table-and-grind-along job. They asked

400..600 EUR. I thankfully quit. That a**ho*e of operator claimed, that it will take at least 4 hours on the vertical surface grinder.

Nick

Reply to
Nick Mueller

reground

In fairness, setting up on a job like that takes quite a time, and grinding isn't the fastest process on one offs where speed cannot easily be optimised. Were it a regular production run, then with jigs time could be reduced to a matter of minutes, but it isn't!

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

snipped-for-privacy@yadro.de...

I got a fixed price on my bridgeport clone of 400 +vat and have booked it in with curtis machine tools bearing in mind that the ways are hardened on my machine and they think it will take just over a day not cheap but fair and they have a good reputation

Andrew Bishop

Reply to
Andrew Bishop

Well he told me, that it takes him an hour to align the work. One side to align in parallel? I would say maximum 30 minutes together with searching for clamps.

And then, how can the other one ask 400 BPL and having to grind several different parts and cast some Moglice / Turcite?

Anyhow, my surface-grinder is getting more and more a nightmare then a gloat. :-(

Nick

Reply to
Nick Mueller

Chris

Where abouts in Dorset are you? I'd seriously like to take a look at their work if you'd agree to that?

I'm in Poole, and have a couple of machines I'd like reground in 2007.

Wayne...

Reply to
Wayne Weedon

Wayne

No problem....you have mail --

Chris Edwards (in deepest Dorset) "....there *must* be an easier way!"

Reply to
Chris Edwards

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.