Help ID Enco mill drill

[seabeeman]

Hello all, new guy looking for some help.

The school I teach at is getting a new CNC Haas for the FabLab, so I'm able to pick up the pictured Enco mill for $100-200. This will hopefully be followed closely by the old south bend lathe! I'm hoping you all might be able to help me ID it. The date tag and motor say 1982, but the model number is rubbed off. It's a 1hp, dual voltage round column Taiwan mill. This would be for light repair or fab work and gunsmithing. Any idea the collet on these and are there manuals or tutorials out there?

After several hours of Googling I've found about a billion people that say they aren't worth the space they take up or hassle of moving, and then guys who actually use them they work fine.

 

[mmcmdl]

For 1-2 hundred ? Jump on it . If it runs , you have a mill !

 

[darkzero]

Looks like an Enco 508VS model 105-1530 mill drill or close to it. Based of the RF30 style round column mill but with variable speed.

Round column mills can be annoying since you loose X-Y positioning whenever you move the Z axis but it just takes some getting used to. RF25/30 style mills have been around forever. Might have issues finding parts for the variable speed if needed but other parts shouldn't be an issue.

If the variable speed works fine or doesn't have major problems, $100- $200 is worth it.

 

[C-Bag]

While this might be based on the RF30, it's a smaller lighter version. And as such you just need to work in its envelope.

The old adage of a good craftsman never blames his tools applies big time to mill/drills. I recently saw a thread here where a member made a running model of a Ford 300-6 with a mill/drill all manual, no CNC. Amazing and inspiring. I too see plenty of folks bagging on mill/drills but few owned or ran them. There's a LOT of us on here who have and use them and get by just fine.

The loss of orientation if you have to lift the head is something that can be avoided by careful planning ahead. I don't use my drill chuck unless I'm going to be using my boring head to keep within the same distance to the table. I have a pretty complete set of R8 collets and short screw length drills. So the length of my end mills and drills is the same so I don't have to raise the head. It also helps tons to put even a cheap 3axis DRO so it's easy to move over to clear the vise and mount a new tool and go back to exactly where you were. One time was I not able to keep to this and used a laser pointer mounted to the head and shoot across the shop to a plumb line on the opposite wall. Raise the head and sight on the plumb line and tighten back down and as far as I could tell was still dead on.

 

[seabeeman]

Thanks for the help everybody, that is huge to know what I'm getting into. When we're back at work Monday, I need to sort through the box and see what else is there for tool holders and tooling I can have. He is getting a Haas TM1-P and ER32 collet system, so I should be getting a pretty complete collet set, and I'm guessing some of the old tooling.

Is this an R8 collet system? Three is a drill chuck in there now, any suggestions on things I should make sure I try and find besides collets?

 

[seabeeman]

I can find generic manuals for these but have yet to find anything on the variable speed. I know finding a specific manual for this is a long shot, but has anybody seen much out there on the variable speed part of the system?

 

[C-Bag]

This is a variant I've never seen, and I've seen a bunch. I've seen some drill presses with something similar. For the record if it works good and is robust there's a bunch of us RF30 users who wish we had something like it. It's not much fun changing the belts to change speed. Its why a lot of users go to 3ph motor with a VFD or a DC setup with a treadmill motor. It would help I think if you could find out who the specific manufacturer was.

 

[seabeeman]

I got a chance to look at it closer today and the variable speed works great. The belt is very nearly new and is very large, the size of a large snowmobile belt. My only concern is the quill has no spring tension to return it back upwards and the fine vertical feed wheel doesn't do anything. However, the spindle feed shaft is pullet out further than it should be and I can see the teeth where the fine wheel should be engaging . The cap on the left side of the machine appears to be pushed out too far, so most likely I just need disassemble and put it back together.

It has a couple R8 collets with it, a 1" end mill holder, a face mill, and a chuck on an R8 holder, as well as a spare chuck. When the new machine gets here Thursday I'll know if I get any of the hold downs and he may send some of the old tooling my way as he gets more, but I'm not counting on any of that.

We settled on $250 with those R8 stuff and the nice vice that is attached. Now I just need to fine a 4' x 4' space in my garage and get it home!

 

[C-Bag]

On the RF30 on the opposite side from drill downfeed handle there is a round box with a coiled spring in it. You should see the end of the spring sticking out. There should be a bolt that holds that round case in place. Take it loose and rotate it against spring pressure and tighten. Check the drill press down feed and see if it springs back. Also on the RF there is a knob in the middle of the drill handles tight the drill handle only works, loose the fine feed works. I could have this backwards as I just use the fine feed. Yours doesn't seem to have the knob so I wonder if you push the handle in?

 

[seabeeman]

I saw that and was fiddling with it. I figured it was a coil spring that had the stop broken off or out of place, I'm sure I can fix that.

I'll monkey with the feed handles but I'm sure it is something I'm doing wrong or just out of adjustment.