Thanks Bernd, here's the result of some more fun

Let's just say I had a long day in the workshop yesterday

The assembled bolt with my homemade helicoil


And mounted back to the table. Some might notice the copper paste on the threads, after restoring a few cars, I never mount a screw without it

Next little fix was the table X-axis handle on the right side. The handles are of the type, push in and engage, but this handle only had one spot where it was possible to push it in enough to get proper grip

In all the other spots it only went this far in, and slipped immediately

So I removed the cover

Pulled the seeger ring and disassembled the mechanism

Having seen a few pictures of polished handwheel edges, I thought I'd give it a go

I should probably have started with some rougher paper, to get it all even, but then I'd have to paint the handle aswell


Then i took a file and filed the "claw" mechanism

Filed a bit on the counterpart and cleaned them

Assembled again, and now it works great


Newt up was the vertical spindle quill, which had bothered me from day one. As it was, there were no handles for moving the quill, the fine feed didn't work at all and the retracting spring was not engaged.

I don't have an instruction manual, so I just started at one point and began disassembling things..

Removed the retention washer and the dial scale


Slowly I seemed to get to the core of things. I also removed the bearing nut and the bearing, but ended in a hole cut in the casing and was not able to pull the shaft out this way..

To access the shaft from the back, I tried to tilt the head, but with no success


Then I decided to try disassembling the main shaft, so started removing things

Had to pull this of the shaft


Afterwards I found out that what I had just pulled of, contained the spring mechanism

Without beeing able to make progress on that side, I started on the other. But before I could pull anything of the shaft, I had to grind down the nasty edges from when people have used the quill with a simple screwdriver

Then it was just a matter of loosening a set screw and pulling it of

A new rusty shaft revealed itself

Removed the mountig bolts

And took it of

Still wanting to remove the main shaft, I tried to get the key out, but it sat in a key way which was perfectly sized for it, seeming to have a slight press fit. I tried heating the shaft with a heat gun, and cooling the key with some snow from outdoors, but no success

After several attempts, uncluding wise grips and hammers, the key looked quite bad

I reckoned I wasn't going to use it any more when looking that bad, so I figured I'd be a bit untraditional..

After having messed up bearing surfaces on previous projects, I was carefull to where I placed the grounding

Welded some spots and let it cool

A bit more welding and some minutes later, it loosened


It seems to also have rusted in it's key way, which obviously didn't make it any easier to remove..

I then tried to pull the shaft out, but soon figured it was stuck by the tooth rack on the back of the quill, so I lowered the quill as much as I dared, without having it fall out, and pulled the shaft out



The only thing left inside the bore now, is the worm-gear for the fine feed

The disassembled parts

I figured I wasn't going to be able to get the fine feed shaft out without removing the head from the machine, so I started repairing things instead. The spring mechanism was first out, and as you can see, the part which is supposed to transfer the forces to the shaft, was laying too far to the left

So I made some aluminium shims, and pryed them into place

I ended up using three shims before I was satisfied with the result

Here's the counterpart where the spring is supposed to hold

After having had some tea and some time to think, i finally understood how the fine feed is engaged. It's all in the mechanism on the shaft of the rapid feed handle

This shaft transferrs the forces from the rapid feed handle to the shaft. But if it is pushed inwards, the claw mechanism engages to the worm gear from the fine feed. So all in all, I had only needed to disassemble these few parts, clean them of rust and dirt, and put them back together again


Here you see the worm-gear counterpart

When I get a new key, I'll be able to assemble the whole lot again. That is, if I remember where all the pieces go

In the meanwhile, i found some suiting aluminium to make a fine feed handwheel

Bored it out with my new 18mm dormer drill


And turned it to size

Will have to turn the other sides aswell, but this is as far as I got

I have also begun thinking of getting me some mint-green machine paint, as there isn't that much work left before I could repaint the whole head

Oh, I managed to check one thing aswell. Thanks to kvom for the tip on checking the "ball point" for batteries, and yes, it had some


But they are strange ones, they are actually 12V each, labeled LRV08


Question:
- I need to buy a collet set. I have seen CDCO reccomended somewhere, and they have very good prices too. What do you think of this CAT40 ER40 collet set?
http://www.cdcotools.com/item.php?itemid=426- Will I be ok using this set, even though I mostly have metric sized cutters?