How's the mill Iggy?

I sold it to a local respected member of sci.engr.joining.welding, with whom we are in very friendly relations (last year, he showed me how to use a plasma cutter etc).

I even made him a primitive phase converter from a 2 HP motor and an Allen-Bradley manual start/stop starter with overloads. It is a rope start kind of converter, which can actually be started with bare hands by spinning the shaft between palms of the hands, and then turning it on. But it works. It would benefit from a pair of 20 uF capacitors.

He had a few friends over with a bobcat that saved us during unloading.

The mill does NOT have a riser, it is shaped such that there seems to be a riser, but it is an integral part of the mill's casting.

A nice thing that I discovered is that the head of this mill can be rotated and turned even horizontally, by means of a worm screw on top of the turret.

We agreed that I may stop by once in a while and use this mill. Which is an offer that I will take him on.

I now have a slightly better idea what sort of a mill I want for myself (I would want a decent DRO and perhaps 2 HP). I will try to use his mill a few times to learn a little more about practical milling.

I need to do a major cleanup of my garage to set up a mill there. Which I will do, I resolved to no more buy any surplus stuff for a while, which is very difficult, but I will try.

At least, now I know that I can handle this sort of stuff.

i

Iggy-

Loving the Bridgeport- Thanks again! Finished a set of control arms for a funny car. (If they hold up may be another story) I'm going broke buying tooling but it's money well spent. No runout problems and since the "ol'timer" showing me some tricks completely hates the electronics and the power-feeds I'm learning some old school stuff that really wears out the calculator batteries and gets the machine used like it was meant to be. Only a few issues with the phase converter but as you said, the caps may clear it up. So far so good- Also the pivot on the head allows me to now machine the keyways into supercharger cranks as they use two instead of one. I did my new Callies crank today and it was 100% on the money. So far I have booked enough work to pay for this already.... No joke.. Looks like the CNC is next since the lathe is being delivered while we are in Oklahoma racing. As we discussed earlier- if you need to use it, don't even think twice. If Pete needs it. I'll be back in town next week if I don't die in the new car. (And we shall see if the funny car falls apart. It did however pass tech with flying colors.)

Thanks again,

Rob

Fraser Competiti>> I could have used that riser block on today's project. I had to mill a

Very nice RDF. Thanks for your offer to use it. I have something in mind for a project -- to take a Harbor Freight #32 manual meat grinder

and couple it with a Dayton 1/2 HP, 60 RPM gear motor that I bought at a garage sale 4 years ago. ($5).

The gearmotor has a keyway on the shaft and the grinder has a flat on the shaft. A most straightforward way would be to machine a flat on the gearmotor's output shaft by milling off the keyway, take a steel round bar, and drill/bore two concentric axial holes to use it as a coupler between the gearmotor and the grinder. I will make sure that the grinder part is removable for cleaning purposes.

If you have interest, I could get the parts in a couple of weeks.

i

Ig, scout around for some cheap rental storage....your surplus stuff days don't have to end.

The way to find that next mill is to on the lookout and surplus sales is a good place to be looking.

TMT

Sounds like a great plan to me.... Let me get my Ex-wife and we will test it out!!!!

Rob

Fraser Competition Engines Chicago, IL.