Milling Rite

Ischgl99 said:
That's what I'm wondering too! A break like that you would think the mill fell over, but you haven't shown any indication of that luckily.
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No, there's no sign of that...but the further I go, the more of Johnny Chimpo's work comes to light.

Pictured: Anything look out-of-whack here?

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That's...well, that's just all kinds of wrong. Here's a closer look...or three.

Pictured: Wrong.

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Pictured: Wronger.

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Pictured: Wrongliest.

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I guess that the standard practice in Chimptopia for releasing tension on the saddle locking handle is to just beat the smurf out of the poor things, until it bends loose. And then, just for funsies, you skip over to a gib screw and cross-thread it.

Pictured: You bastard.

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To turn a ragged quote: "Those of you that knowingly cross-thread fasteners and then leave them in place for someone else to find will burn in a very special level of hell: a level they reserve for child molesters, and people that talk at the theater."
 
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That deserves a Jesus H. facepalm.

Chimp daddy made a cam lever out of a lock lever.

Chimpin' ain't easy.

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I would call the previous owner a barbarian, but that would be an insult to barbarians. It boggles my mind how someone could treat a machine tool, or anything!, like that.
Dave Bonzo said:
And then, just for funsies, you skip over to a gib screw and cross-thread it.
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When I was a field engineer, I had to bring along a set of taps with me since I seemed to run into that guy’s cousins everywhere I went.
 
Note to Self: Write a helpful series of PSAs about how to successfully deport people to North Korea, should they knowingly violate lubrication schedules.

Pictured: Friends don't let friends grease gibs.

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Yeah, that was fun to discover.

It's really quite the disaster in here, but to be honest: I'm glad that I tore it down this far, because I wouldn't have wanted to let any of this garbage remain. And despite the sheer amount of excavated stupidity there doesn't seem to be any boss-level damage; overall, the mill is still in very good shape. It's the control interfaces - handles, handwheels, exterior finishes - that took all of Chimpo's abuse...and those are replaceable. It seems impossible, but the ways and gibs and all of the things that make the mill actually work are basically intact; I could probably even get away with leaving those knee gears in place, because the worst of the broken teeth still have 80% of their engagement left. I'm not going to do that because 80% isn't acceptable to me, but regardless: it demonstrates the point.

In any case, today's efforts will be minimal: I'm running to pick up some pieces of a beam to build a workbench top, and I'm stopping by the hardware on the way home to buy a new set of screws. Only four of the five screws that hold that saddle gib in place were actually in place; the fifth was totally missing...so I guess Chimpo was totally okay with 80% being good enough. That would explain a lot.
 
I've figured something about about shop design and building: it's either incredibly risky and expensive, or incredibly slow. Like, right now I've just realized that in all of my packing and moving, I somehow didn't end up with a set of taps or a tap wrench...so, now I'm going to have to come up with one on short notice I have the opportunity to buy one. So...I'll have to pick one out, buy it, wait on it to arrive, wait on a set of taps to arrive, and then I can address the mangled threading that I discovered last night and which drove me into premature alcoholism. That's an incredibly slow process; the alternative is to try to guess about what I'll need and what I'll be using long before I actually get there...and that's incredibly risky and expensive. I'm not sure why I didn't grasp this before...but at least I finally get to pick out a nice tap wrench.
 
Dave Bonzo said:
I'm not sure why I didn't grasp this before...but at least I finally get to pick out a nice tap wrench.
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I made a Starrett 91A size wrench and like that style better compared to the T handle ones. The B size should be able to handle anything on that mill.

 
Ischgl99 said:
That’s a good point, I was assuming a previous owner, but a lot of this could be explained by a worker that didn’t care.
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I honestly wouldn't have expected this kind of hidden dysfunction based on my assessment of the previous owner...but he did tell me that at one time, he had people working for him, and that would lend a lot of credence to the theory that there was a paid chimp on-site.

Ischgl99 said:
I made a Starrett 91A size wrench and like that style better compared to the T handle ones. The B size should be able to handle anything on that mill.
Click to expand...

So, this is interesting: the gib isn't cross-threaded. I was explaining part of the saga to someone this morning, and when I pulled up my own photos to give the discussion a bit of visual interest, I realized that the mangled threads aren't the portion that actually contact the gib. They're in the middle of the fastener, and they're not actually crossed: they're mashed and burred, where they've been run across something. So I came home and had a look, and sure enough: no damage to the gib...but it looks like one of the through-bored holes through which the screws pass is actually a bit wonky. So, it may be that the casting itself is at fault, and not Johnny Chimpo: there's a first time for everything, I suppose.

This being said: I'm going to take a closer look tomorrow and see what happens when I get the table and saddle cleaned and reassembled-ish. Now that I have the small hoist, I don't have to tear everything down into the lightest possible assemblies in order to move them...so I can work on these pieces while I wait on the gear people to respond to me.
 
I was thinking that gib screw was not cross threaded either. But, something got in the middle and started galling the threads.

I’ve had similar things happen when I am making a new part that threads into an old part. I will thread, and do test fits as I go, to try to make the threads as tight as I can.

Nothing worse than having the parts thread so easily, until they all of a sudden, they don’t. I think I finally learned some of the reason why.

Sometimes I will use a piece of emery cloth, and or a die grinder with a flap wheel on it to debur the threads. That grinding dust/ sandpaper particles can be a bear to clean out. If the threads are tight enough, they will slightly push the debris up, til it builds up, and effectively locks the two pieces together. Really stinks when I have to ruin the new piece in order to save the old piece and start over.


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