Started off by milling some steel to make a single post fence for the wood cutting bandsaw. All was proceeding well when I noticed the mill X way had developed or rather was developing noticeable backlash. I continued then decided to look underneath only to hit the stop immediately as the bronze nut was just about to drop out of its socket!
Much engineering esperanto was used and it was carefully manipulated back. I then emailed an acquaintance , who I knew had one of these machines and asked him if , during his refurbishment he had experienced this and how to get access as it was all hidden. Although I have the manual it doesn’t have any breakdown diagrams or cross sectional views to give me a clue!
Alll I did know was there looked to be two dimples for either pins or grub screws to locate in. Phil was a saviour As he recalled he had a similar experience and there was. a way to access with only partial strip down. Saturday was spent in removing table and accessories and 6 hours or so on Sunday was spent carefully dis assembling , photographing on the ipad at all stages , and re assembling the knee assemble having got to the two grub screws and reseated them.
For any alexander owners Hillest has also published a series of very useful stripdown photos of his Deckel which is similar to my Alexander ( thanks again for that Phil ).
Result I now have a working mill with auto feed and very little backlash so this has obviously been developing for some time unbeknown to me.
I have tried to use photoresizer to send photos but am not having any success. Indeed I have just had to retype this to send it 🤷♂️