I had been wanting a milling machine for a while now.
It is hard to find a good mill in B.C Canada. After 1.5 years of watching craigslist I found a wells-index 745 down in washington state in a custom motorcycle shop. Previous owner had it for many decades and said it was used a few times a year as a back-up to thier main mill, I think the owner purchased from a custom car shop in california who he thought bought it new. which meant it never did production work and was proabbly lightly used.
I called wells index before puchasing it and they confirmed it was a 1hp 3ph, R8 spindle, Sold feb 4, 1969.
I ran it for 30-40 min and everything worked good. Only issue I noticed was a little backlash in the X axis about 20thousands. Table, and knee seemed smooth and tight along full travel. They also included a vise, hold downs and some cutters.
Thankfully the motorcycle shop had a huge crane to load it in our truck.
My father inlaw and I transported it back to Canada in his truck then used his forklift and palet jack to unload it into my workshop. Suprisingly the move was actually not that hard at all.
I am pretty excited to finally have a Mill.
I took the table and knee off for cleaning and discovered although, it was not very dirty that the oil ports had been greesed
The good part is all of the precision surfaces look excellent. Since I had to clean out all the oil ports anyway, the plan in to dismantle, repaint, clean, replace the XY nuts and reassembal.
It is hard to find a good mill in B.C Canada. After 1.5 years of watching craigslist I found a wells-index 745 down in washington state in a custom motorcycle shop. Previous owner had it for many decades and said it was used a few times a year as a back-up to thier main mill, I think the owner purchased from a custom car shop in california who he thought bought it new. which meant it never did production work and was proabbly lightly used.
I called wells index before puchasing it and they confirmed it was a 1hp 3ph, R8 spindle, Sold feb 4, 1969.
I ran it for 30-40 min and everything worked good. Only issue I noticed was a little backlash in the X axis about 20thousands. Table, and knee seemed smooth and tight along full travel. They also included a vise, hold downs and some cutters.
Thankfully the motorcycle shop had a huge crane to load it in our truck.
My father inlaw and I transported it back to Canada in his truck then used his forklift and palet jack to unload it into my workshop. Suprisingly the move was actually not that hard at all.
I am pretty excited to finally have a Mill.
I took the table and knee off for cleaning and discovered although, it was not very dirty that the oil ports had been greesed
The good part is all of the precision surfaces look excellent. Since I had to clean out all the oil ports anyway, the plan in to dismantle, repaint, clean, replace the XY nuts and reassembal.