K&t Not Happy

Hey Johnathon...
Thanks for sharing. This inspires me (and I'm sure others too!) to keep working on our old iron projects ;)
Jeff P
 
Happy Sunday morning!

Last night I did actually do some milling with the K&T as you can see in my previous post. I just have the cutter that came with the machine, and no clamps for the table, so I c-clamped a 2X4 to the table and managed to cut it. That was a wonderful thing.

After messing around Friday night and yesterday morning, doing no real good (took the speed panel off again!) it finally sunk in that the knee being low on oil might be causing all of my problems. It appears that this machine does after all have a start lever. It's actually on the knee. When there is enough oil in the knee, the knee sends a squirt of oil through a hydraulic line to the mechanism on the speed panel that pushes the start yoke out to disengage the brake. Once I figured out that the oil level might be causing my problems, I started hunting for where to add the oil. Well, that only took me the rest of the day yesterday. After the umpteenth time going through the lube manual and finding absolutely nothing that was a fill hole, I had a light bulb moment:

85E7vyCh.jpg

You take the above panel off and pour your oil in. I didn't even realize that panel came off until I saw the arrow in the manual and then went out and whacked it with a screwdriver. Of course it went flying off, luckily it hit the floor without breaking! The gears inside that panel are (I believe) the feed change gears. I swapped two of the gears around and the table speed changed by about 50%. Unfortunately I got absolutely nothing besides the mill when I bought it, so I think the gears are long gone. they are on spline shafts so making new ones won't be particularly easy. At least I have the table moving under power and the spindle turning now.

Does anyone have any recommendations on sealing some of these panels? I was thinking of using RTV but I know that can cause foaming problems with oil. I won't be sealing anything that is below the oil line so maybe that isn't a concern.

Thanks!!

ps - Jeff - I learned a long time ago that when something is broke, it's broke. Don't be afraid to tear into it, at the worst it will still be broke when you put it back together...
 
Thanks for sharing the photos of the guts of your machine :). Get it back together and you'll be taking massive cuts in no-time.

Good luck with the repair.

Mike
 
Hello Mike,

I have been following your thread with interest, as I've been working on tearing down an old horizontal mill at this time as well. It was advised to me to use a gasket material in a similar thickness to the original instead of a gasket sealant, especially on the cam/change feed panel, as it may affect the meshing of the change forks, etc.

Here is what I ended up using...

IMGP0204%20800x600_zpsvuqgikzv.jpg

It measures approximately .045" in thickness and is a paper type gasket. It seems to be working well on the oil sumps, which were leaking like sieves before now.

Keep up the good work... :)

Brian
 
Yeah, the more I thought about it the more I thought paper may be the way to go. I'll have to tear everything back off again, and it wasn't very joyful getting things lined up and spinning that last time, but such is life. Better to take the time than have to clean up oil spills after every use. I'd have to rename her 'Exxon Valdez.'

My next question is about a drawbar. I have the short drawbar on the vertical head. I'd also really like one for the spindle so I can mount tools on it directly. Does the drawbar need to be of any particular type of steel? How fussy do I need to be about this?

Next silly question, my one and only power feed is for the table. I currently have no rapid, just the two speeds when I switch the gears around (~6IPM and ~12IPM.) I assume that the rapid should be on the same handle as the feed, you can push the handle in and out and then left or right. Does this mean I have broken bits in the knee? I'm not tremendously concerned right now about this, I'm happy the thing is running! Some day the rapid would probably be nice to have though. In the picture the feed handle is top right.
IMG_8032r.jpg
BTW the shaft on the left side of the knee, just above the sight glass, is the start lever. It's actually a neat system now that I know how it works.

Hopefully I'll be getting a 3/4" end mill and a complete set of inserts for my shouldering mill tonight. I'll have to get the vertical head back on and actually cut some metal this weekend. Hopefully I'll be getting some steel this weekend to make a couple of dollies so I can move it around better. Right now I'm rolling it in and out on pipe. Crowbaring it around has my back pretty angry lol.

Thanks!!
 
Jonathan,

I don't know how the K&T works, on the VanNorman mills the rapids are a separate lever. You might want to check out Keith Fenner (turn wright machine works) on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/user/KEF791 . He has a K&T, and rebuilt it from the ground up. IIRC there aren't many videos of the rebuild; but you might want to contact him and ask some questions. Video on repairing the knee
BTW, instead of making a dolly for the mill, mine lives on some 4 x 4's and when I need to move it I use a pallet jack. The jack comes in handy for other things around the shop and house. I got mine from Northern Tool, on sale and I had a 20% off of purchase over $100; making the cost "reasonable".

Mike
 
So far so good. I didn't have any gasket shellac, so of course all but one of my paper gaskets leaked. I ended up just removing the paper and using some RTV and seem to have mostly fixed that issue. If I get ambitious one day I'll retry the paper, that will be when the machine gets torn apart for a deep cleaning though. After a couple days I was finally able to get the toolholder out of the vertical head. I fleabay'd a CAT40 ER25 collet set for cheap and it arrived Saturday so I spent Sunday making a new 'drawbar' for the head out of a piece of 5/8-11 allthread. After some time on the grinder I had the CAT40 holder installed. Next time I take the head off I'll make the extended drawbar for the column and then I'll be set after a little grinding.
2015-04-19 13.21.03r.jpg

I have thought and looked at many solutions for making this 3000 pound machine mobile. I don't like the pallet jack idea because the pallet jack takes up a chunk of real estate that I just don't have in my tiny garage. Somewhere online I saw that somebody had made a pair of Z brackets with casters that slip under the front and back of the machine. Keeps the machine really low to the ground and will be dead simple to make. The base of the mill already has the holes through the casting for machinery feet so when I need to move it I can turn the feet to the right height, slide the brackets under, lower the machine onto them, move where I need to and reverse the process. When I am finally able to move out of my house, my next one WILL have a shop space. For now I think the brackets are the best, cheapest, easiest!

Hopefully I can make some time this weekend to get back to working on my adapters so I can make handles. Using a crescent wrench is a bit of a pain...

Thanks!!
 
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