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home made mill
millwright:
Nice to see it all coming together now Bob, Its looking good. :clap: :clap:
John
krv3000:
hi all thanks for the comments all but dun gnaw as im on holiday I have had sum time to put the z and y bit on the base I had to make sum washers for the 4 fixing bolts there 5 mm thick od 32 mm with a 10.2 hole then just put it all back together and clocked the table in so its running parallel with the column run out at both ends the same with a dip in the middle I need to make two bushes for ether end as their is to much play in the end brackets and to drill them to put oilers in the next big job is I need to make a spacer block to bring the head of the mill to the centre of the table right pics first pic of the dti is in the centre then next left then right
DavidA:
As I mentioned above, I have the same milling head as Bob, but mine is, at the moment, bolted onto the back of my lathe.
Before going the whole hog and emulating Bob's set up with the X,Y table, I decided to try using it as it was originally intended; on the lathe. I haven't done this before as I have the Micro Mill for my small jobs.
So, I removed the lathe topslide and found that I could just about fit my small milling vice to the top of the cross slide if I drilled and tapped some new holes to fix the hold-down clamps.
With this done, and the vice mounted I did a trial run. Milling the surface of a 15 mm wide aluminium block.
(start simple). I was using a 10 mm cutter.
Then I discovered a snag.
You can't lock the cross slide.
Locking the saddle will prevent most of side to side motion, and tightening up the slide gibs helps.
But you encounter a problem. The back lash in the cross slide lead screw.
If, say, you do a cut along the rear of the job (left to right), and you are conventional milling, the cutter will pull the job towards the rear of the machine.
If you now try to repeat the operation along the front (right to left), the cutter again pulls the job. This time towards the front.
Come to think of it, it will also do this when you are milling along opposite sides of a job in the which ever way you are cutting.
Short of fitting some kind of clamp and always ensuring that the backlash is taken up in one direction I can't see an answer to this. There will always be backlash in the lead screw, and unlike the gib slides, it can't be taken out easily.
I posted this here because it may be something Bob has an answer to.
Dave.
seadog:
I fitted an extended screw in place of the standard gib adjuster and fabricated a small lever. I can now lock my cross slide. This is on a Boxford.
DavidA:
Seadog,
I'm considering doing the same thing. My lathe is a Denford.
Thinking about it, I am still going to have to be very careful when moving from side to side as, even if I lock the gib when on one side, I will have to unlock to move to the other side. And will lose my 'zero' in the process.
Dave.
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