Atlas MFC horizontal mill casting

[ThinWoodsman]

So, I ended up with a second Atlas MFC when buying parts for the first. I needed a few things, and a local buyer-and-seller-of-machines had quite a few dead ones lying about and said you know what, just take a whole one for that price, save us some disasembly time.

I don't know if the motor works. Almost all of the niceties like handles are gone, the changeomatic and the feed mechanism as well. I am taking the countershaft bracket. But the base casting, column, head, knee, saddle, and table are all there.

Currently I am disassembling it just to make moving it around manageable. If anyone is interested in building a machine off this (and if you are, I can introduce you to a guy with a lot of parts), it's yours for the asking. I do not ship, so local pick-up or the ol' park-and-ride meetup only.

 

[ThinWoodsman]

Disassembled into knee (+ carriage, table), base (+ column, head). and motor. Needs a serious clean but seems in good shapee. Have not checked motor or spindle.

Taking a look at it, I'm considering making a benchtop surface grinder out of it. Gotta read up on the specs for a grinder to see if the spindle and motor can handle it. Failing that, maybe put a cup grinding wheel on the spindle and use it as an over-engineered tool & cutter grinder.

Just what I need, one more project to add to the collection. Original MFC needs to be brought up to operational capacity, and that benchtop bandsaw ain't gonna build itself. Even if I put an arduino and some CNC software next to it

 

[34_40]

The surface grinder sounds like a neat idea. Not sure if the bearings would be up to that task.. but maybe if the wheel wasn't to large.

 

[GrayTech]

With a small wheel on the original head and power feeds you could grind stuff square on 4 sides in the same setup. That would be useful.

 

[ThinWoodsman]

Well, the table feed mechanism is gone, so I'd need to rebuild that. The spindle probably wouldn't go up to 3600 RPM, though I could risk it by changing the pulleys. Probably have to bump up to at least a 1/2 HP motor as well.

Still, this is a sturdy base with an X-Y table and a knee. Maybe to start, I'll fab a mount for a die grinder, see how that plays out.

 

[ThinWoodsman]

This is giving me some ideas. I could run a flexshaft through the spindle and hold it in a collet or toolholder, with a spindle brake in place. Mount the actual dremel in the back where the gearbox used to be. That would get me up and running superfast, and I could look into using the actual spindle with a cup wheel like a tool & cutter grinder.

Could do the same with a pencil die grinder, though that means running air to the bench where I plan to house the thing.

The surface grinder idea looks to be problematic due to the difficulty of not burning the part when using a manual machine table.