Beware, many pictures to follow

Here are the housings after three coats of paint

I used a fluffy roller brush on the last coat, and unfortunately it lost many of it's hairs to the paint


But, I was anxious to get it assembled, so I removed the paint masking

Cleaned all the parts and lined them up

Outgoing side of angular housing assembled. What worries me is that the bearings of this shaft have no means of additional lubrication as the machine is being used, while the other two shafts have grease nipples that lead grease in to the middle between the bearings


Then I put the housing on wooden blocks and assembled the ingoing shaft as well

Next up was the main spindle assembly. I had gotten hold of some more grease and lubed up the bearings before assembly

Then I laid in the gear, before I put the shaft in, slid the gear onto the shaft and was able to start tightening the spindle bearing nut

Here you see the gear lurking inside its housing


Here's a view from the top, without the top bearing in place

Before continuing with the assembly of the main spindle, I had to put the two housings together

Then I found the top bearing and cleaned of the hard oil with some wd40. I hope this picture explains what I mean about roller bearing without a locating edge.

I used the cut inner ring of the old bearing to carefully knock the new bearing in place, after having knocked the outer ring in first.

Quick trial fit of the assembled head


Then it was time to get the quill head of

A bit of fiddeling later, the new head was finally on

I managed to damage the paint a bit during the mounting as it is just at the limit of what I can lift by myself.


Before doing anything more, I let the spindle run at 110rpm for a minute, then I tightened the top and bottom bearing nuts.

Out of interrest, I got the dial indicator out, to measure the runout of the spindle with the ER32 collet chuck mounted

On one full revolution I only had 0,01mm of runout, and that might also be from the outer surface of the chuck


I dug out the little MIG welder and tacked the previously broken T-slot bolts together again

Put them under the vise and dialed in to within 0,02mm. (The surface I measured on was not perfectly flat so it was difficult to get an accurate reading)

Then I figured I had to set the tram on the mill, so a tramming tool was needed. I found some random steel rod and put it in the lathe

After a bit of turning I had a shaft with a <10mm shank

I planned on cutting of another section of the same shaft and mill it, but I got too carried away, so I just put the newly turned part in the vise

I guess I'm not getting any awards for proper milling setup either


Just out of curiousity, I tried milling a flat on top of the bar, to aid in seeing how straight it was mounted and to get an idea of how the tram was

After having knocked the bar to a semi horizontal position (lacking parallells), I chucked up the centre drill in the collet chuck (lacking drill chuck) and drilled a hole for the dial indicator location.

Then I drilled the hole with a 7,5mm drill, before I stepped up to a 8mm drill to get close to the final size

Then I flipped it over, and again by eyesight measured that the new hole would be somewhat perpendicular to the previous one.

After having centre drilled the hole, I drilled it to 4,5mm to allow for good space around a M4 screw. I also made a relief cut with the hack saw, but it was so tilted I don't dare to show it here

Since I had drilled the original bar, I had to turn up another one. I grinded it a bit on the end, making the parts ready for welding

The MIG welder was used again, and here's the result

I also welded a M4 nut to the back of the tool, as this was much easier than trying to tap the poor thing

And woila, the tramming tool was ready for use


It was a bit of a pain to tram the head as the tramming tool was offset from the centre of the boom and gravity only wanting the head to rotate in one direction.. But after some swearing, I managed to get it pretty close to straight. From what I could red of my dial indicator I was about 0,01mm of when I settled with it. But my table has a very rough surface so it was hard to measure accurately.

Now that everything seemed fine, I lobbed up a piece of odd shaped aluminium in the vise and felt ready for milling


My first chips (with the vertical head)

But I must admit, I'm a lazy bastard. I only turn the handwheels for positioning of the tool, then the auto feed does the rest of the job


I cut the surface back and forth with no thought about climb milling or other stuff, just to see how the surface would look

It's a rough one. The depth of cut was definetely the largest to the right, where the marks also are the largest. There is a noticeable ridge between the paths where the tool has traveled. Not quite sure what the cause of this is

Previously I had tried to measure the table wear by putting the dial indicator on like this and then pushing/pulling at the end of the table (as to rotate it arond the vertical axis), and I got 0,48mm of indicator movement. I also tried putting the indicator on top of the table, lifting/leaning on the end of the table. The indicator traveled 0,50mm, accompanied by a squishing sound as from an oil film being broken


When doing this test, I had not locked the Y- and Z-axis (not that the Z-axis lock is working anymore anyways) so the measured movement probably comes a bit from each axis.
I thought about adjusting the table gibs, so I cranked (not really, I used the rapid power feed

) the table to each end to look at the adjustment screws.
On the small end of the adjusment gib, the screw is unscrewed until it stands against the lubrication pump housing.

On the big end, is is adjusted as far in as possible. My only option seems to be shimming..

I thought it was time to try making some T-slot nuts, but only found a stainless plate in the suiting dimension. So I tried milling the top of it, before I called it a day.
I need to think out a way to make those nuts without having neither parallells nor a clamping kit


Todays questions:
- Where can I buy a 0,20mm shim that is 400mm long?
- What can cause the ridge on the milled aluminium part?
- How can I make my mill table flat and shiny?