12z Version 2.0

coolidge

coolidge

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I waved goodbye to the old 12z mill this week...in a cross pattern while shaking holy water on the crate. Welcome to my 12z version 2.0 thread!

Rigging - the way they ship diagonally on the pallet you can't get under it with an engine hoist so I rigged it to my Harbor Freight chain hoist. Those lifting straps are rated 6500 lbs each so no worries.



Here I have it rigged to the engine hoist for lifting onto the stand. Note the 1.5 inches of aluminum blocks under each corner, this lifts the mill high enough to clear the engine hoist.



Hoisted up onto my custom built stand safe and sound. Its still slathered in shipping grease and oil but so far finish appears to be MUCH improved from the first mill. The micro feed is smooth and the ACME screws are well lubricated. No sign of rust anywhere.

Note I retained the Leeson motor and electrical from the first mill, I waiting on some electrical accessories from McMasterCarr to arrive before re-installing on this mill.



Well now what do we have here? I'm thinking positive and dropped $1,200 on some mill accessories hoping this mill is at least as good as Bill's!



I raided Enco, the rotary table and tailstock was already on sale and I used a 20% off discount code in addition to that. Feels like I stole it! I gave the table a quick cloth wipe down but this stuff is otherwise still mucked up with packing grease.



Here's a comparison shot, I wasn't sure about the 8" rotary setup, my old rotary table was a 10" I'm glad I went with the 8" I think its sized better to this size mill.



Dang these power feeds are BIG, way bigger than they look in the puny Enco pic. That's the 3HP Leeson motor for scale. These are made in Taiwan and the finish is quite nice.

At 20% off I got carried away and purchased a 2nd unit for the Y axis...ah...um...well...FAIL! These are designed to clamp onto the end of the table, there's nothing to clamp onto for the Y axis. I'll think on it but my gut feeling is engineering a solution may not be worth the effort, we'll see. I'll get starting on cleaning this weekend stay tuned.
 
Hi Coolidge,

What happened to the first mill? I didn't see another thread on it.

Thanks,

Conan
 
There was a list of quality issues and we both finally threw our hands up on that mill.
 
Good to hear that round 2 is going better.

(and there you go flashing the picture of the strong hand welding table at us again)
 
I should make it my avatar then follow you around the forum = evil!
 
Ah...this mill looks MUCH better.

I managed to lift mine with my shop hoist, but only after whacking off the corners of that pallet. :D

Looking forward to your impressions as you get it cleaned and set up.

Quick question? How long are those lifting straps you are using and where did you get them? I had already determined that lifting this thing would have been SO much easier with the motor removed, and now that I have the belt drive installed it is literally two bolts to get it off so this is how I want to lift my mill off it's stand when moving time comes.
 
Yup, hope this one meets your expectations over the first one. I was wondering how you were going to adapt the second power power feed for the Y axis. It's much different than a BP but didn't want to say anything & wait & see. I'm curious to what your solution will be.
 
darkzero said:
Yup, hope this one meets your expectations over the first one. I was wondering how you were going to adapt the second power power feed for the Y axis. It's much different than a BP but didn't want to say anything & wait & see. I'm curious to what your solution will be.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of getting a regular Y-axis, vertical power feed like those on a BP or clone and making a different bearing/screw support if need be to mount it to the front of the base. But then I'd have to cut a big chunk out of the front of my chip tray, so back to the drawing board. There is access to the Y-axis screw from the back of the column. A motorized mechanism back there would leave the handwheel up front for manual control.

One of the last times I talked to Paul at CO I was semi-joking about maybe doing the full CNC conversion just so I could get power feed on each axis and use the manual controls/jog for positional control. Extreme overkill, and it would take the (to me) fun out of cranking the handles. I deal with computers all day, and the last thing I want to do is sit in front of one drawing lines just to make a simple cut.
 
wrmiller19 said:
Extreme overkill, and it would take the (to me) fun out of cranking the handles. I deal with computers all day, and the last thing I want to do is sit in front of one drawing lines just to make a simple cut.
Click to expand...

Not that bad. Use an pendant (aka "cranking handles") to position the table to where you want to start the cut. Type the instructions right in the MDI line "G01 X20 F20"... and watch it cut your piece. No need to draft simple stuff up in CAD. Use the wizards for things like circular and rectangular pockets (which just requires you to type in X and Y values and it spits out the g-code for you). Anything you can do on a manual machine, you can do using the encoder and the MDI on a cnc mill... only faster and with better cut quality because you maintain constant feed rates.

my turn to be evil...
 
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