Clean & Repaint of a Rockwell 21-122 Horizontal/Vertical

polyfractal

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Hey all! First post, first mill. I'm brand new to machining and recently picked up a mill from my local craigslist: a Rockwell 21-122 Horizontal/Vertical mill.

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I purchased it from an estate sale, and it appears the previous owners took great care of it. The ways are all in great shape, the various moving components actuate smoothly, looks like ~10 thou backlash on x-axis, the table has seen better days but doesn't have any major gouges, etc. There's a layer of dust, grime and rust in places but nothing terrible.

The only major flaw on arrival was the quill, which didn't fully retract into the head. It felt like there is some kind of blockage in the rack/pinion gearing near the 1" mark which simply prevented it from retracting fully. The spindle bearings also felt a bit rough.

The mill also came with a ton of tooling, including an extra power feed, three vices, a rotary table, and assortment of end mills, taps, drills, punches, files, and a boring head. It also came with the important horizontal accessories, namely the overarm support, a tool arbor and spacers..

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Because I'm new to machining, and the mill is in relatively good condition, I really don't want to mess it up smile.gif I originally planned to do a full rebuild and scrape ways, re-align, etc. But I've re-considered my skill and the amount of work... and honestly the mill looks to be in good shape and will be fine for me as a beginner.

So instead I'm just doing a clean/repaint/re-assemble. My main objective was to get at the spindle bearings to see if they needed replacing. Also to address the quill travel problem. The paint overall was in pretty good condition... but there were a few areas where it had flaked badly and was rusting. So I'm just going to repaint the whole mill so everything matches.

I decided this would be a fun project to try my hand filming, so I've been shooting a lot of footage of the clean/repaint. Here are the first two episodes:

This video has an overview/walkaround of the mill, some fooling around with cutting aluminum scrap, then disassembling and cleaning the vertical head.

This video is mostly cleaning/stripping the fiddly bits of the vertical head; the fine feed control, the head rotation mechanism and the pulley/brake assembly.

I think there will probably be one or two more videos. I have a bunch of footage of removing the table, stoning it, etc. Also stripping the body + masking + spraying, then re-assembly. I'll post those up once I get the footage edited together. :)
 
Well, it really is Christmas time. That looks like a great machine with countless hours of fun. This is going to be a fantastic rebuild. :encourage:
 
Nice versatile machine, and you are way ahead of the game, starting out with a great assortment of accessories and tooling. Welcome aboard, and I'm thinking Paco's crystal ball is spot on. Cheers, Mike
 
Thanks all! I'm pretty excited to start using it once I'm finished cleaning it. Have a laundry list of projects I want to work on :) The mill came with a nice selection of starter tooling, but I can already see a bunch of things that I'll need in the future. Plan is to start grabbing tooling a little bit at a time as I need it for projects, to help defray the cost :)

I see a lathe in your future and maybe a press.
Haha for sure, I've already setup email alerts for lathes in my area :)
 
YUPP she's a beauty and the extras are what you need to start with. Have fun and be safe , read up on the precautions and keep hands and fingers away from cutters and moving parts. No hanging jewelry or loose clothing , strings , rings , long hair . Remember that machine only knows to go and stop with you in control. Great machine to have best of luck with your baby.
 
Hehe very good points :) I've done a fair bit of woodworking, so safety precautions around spinning blades has been pretty ingrained in my head... I'm hoping most of that safety training will translate over to metalworking. Although hot chips flying around will be new to me, and more chance of breaking tools if something goes pear shaped :)

I am thinking about moving the on/off switch though. The vertical head's control panel is the one on the bottom left, behind and below the table. It's really awkward to get to without reaching over the table (seems like a bad idea). And if something is going wrong I'll want to mash the button quickly without running around the table. Think I'll move it somewhere up high, near the head similar to how I've seen some bridgeports configured.
 
Nice machine, and good videos of the head disassembly. I just got one of these last fall, and eventually I'll need to clean and re-pack the spindle bearings. Your videos are going to be very helpful!
 
Very nice machine. I think you will enjoy running it. I will do spindle and motor bearings on mine in the near futureIMG_0203.JPG Your videos are definitely helpful!
I would recommend DRO's early on your upgrade list.
 
Hey polyfractal,
Great post and videos. Nice mill too. Looking forward to more videos of the refresh and then of machining projects.
 
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