Just bought a Van Norman No. 0 mill

[Uglydog]

Please tell us about the motor. I'm guessing that's the motor (and not a flat belt pulley) off the right hand side of the pic.
Volts, phase, Hz, RPM, motor frame designation. Not that I need to know but curiosity!!

I see that you've included an image for an ad.
Here is a link with greater clarity of image: http://www.vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/imagedetail.aspx?id=20015

Daryl
MN

 

[DAM 79]

Looks like you have a nice machine and welcome to the VanNorman club it will do probably anything you want it to I have a much newer 3R-10 mill ( it’s weigh almost 10K )and I can tell you the one thing about these VanNorman Mills is there is not a lot of info out there about them because they had a limited run they were and for some reason they were not that popular and or as common as say a Bridgeport machine but if it’s anything like mine you will be very happy and it will do anything you want it to do

 

[sdy5001]

@DAM 79 a 10k lbs machine?! Hot diggity. But, as for Van Normans, that's been my experience for sure...a really robust and thoughtfully designed machine built to exacting standards that I can't find a lick of information about. I'm actually just now finally starting the disassembly, clean, repair, replace, paint- process and I'm actually hoping that someone can perhaps suggest maybe a text or two on babbitt spindle bearing assemblies or babbitt machine restorations... just to make sure I don't get into too much trouble, I'd love to digest a little bit of info now (50 or 100 pages?). I had to loosen my spindles babbitt assembly to get it properly clean and now it feels like it's going to go back together really really well but I'm not sure what the torque spec might be or if that is done simply on feel and if I should actually take the thing entirely apart and cutting in oil grooves or anything now, etc... This is obviously arguably the most important part of the machine and something that absolutely must be done right and something I have very little experience with... One can read about lapping and scraping ad nauseam so the last hurdle will be mating a two horsepower VFD setup, But I want to get everything confidently accurately and functionally together first so any advice for someone taking these initial steps, or any texts advised or suggested, would be super immensely appreciated. Thank you all very much!

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[DAM 79]

So I don’t have any experience with the Babbitt bearings but I have seen some videos on YouTube where Keith Rucker had to replace them and it didn’t look to be that hard to do just one of them things that you have to try it and see how it goes because you can always take it out and met it down and pour again !!! But I would definitely check out Vintage Machine website there is a lot of info there for things like that and possibly even a Manuel for your machine he had more stuff for the VanNorman mills then anywhere else when I was looking

 

[DAM 79]

Here’s a pic of what my VanNorman mill looks like the table on it is like 14X64 if that gives you a idea of the size because it’s hard to tell in the pictures

 

[sdy5001]

@DAM 79 ha! That is absolutely humongous! What is such a large mill typically used for aside from longer parts because the Z access is still going to be limited by the cutter length I would think... What I mean is that all features would be limited to a certain depth therefore essentially limiting the height of a part of a part ultimately. Granted I bet it effortlessly removes absurd amounts of money 3rd amount of material but I would think that without a 4th or 5th access that that things would get in the way of each other...And although stylistically, the van Norman engineers were clearly all business by the time they got to designing your mill (everything is so clearly functional and square and all business like), yet it still has awesome cartoonishly large handwheels. What a killer machine though! And you use this at your house? My notifications were turned off or I would have responded with this much excitement as soon as you posted.

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[gavin319]

@DAM 79 ha! That is absolutely humongous! What is such a large mill typically used for aside from longer parts because the Z access is still going to be limited by the cutter length I would think... What I mean is that all features would be limited to a certain depth therefore essentially limiting the height of a part of a part ultimately. Granted I bet it effortlessly removes absurd amounts of money 3rd amount of material but I would think that without a 4th or 5th access that that things would get in the way of each other...And although stylistically, the van Norman engineers were clearly all business by the time they got to designing your mill (everything is so clearly functional and square and all business like), yet it still has awesome cartoonishly large handwheels. What a killer machine though! And you use this at your house? My notifications were turned off or I would have responded with this much excitement as soon as you posted.

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Hey! I'm so sorry for never responding. I got busy with a few other things and apparently missed the emails about responses to my post. I've done a few small projects with my VN mill so far and I love it. It's rock solid and I've had no issues. I've done some clean up, added some red n tacky grease to gears, etc. I used the mill to rebuild a mount for a telescope I was giving to someone which was fun. I'm actually undertaking a bigger project right now. I'm guessing some people might frown on this but I'm actually bringing this ancient mill up to more modern uses. I popped the handles of my axis feeds and used my lathe to bore out some aluminum pulleys to put on the axis feeds. Then I mounted some stepper motors (temporarily) with clamps and wood as a proof of concept. So my old mill is now well on its way to becoming a cnc mill. I have the controller board assembled, an ethernet smoothstepper and mach3 running. I just need to meet up with my machinist friend to weld some aluminum blocks to screw my motor mounts into. Then I'll screw those into the knee of the mill and edge of the underside of the table (for the X motor mount). Those holes should be the only permanent changes I make to the mill so I can always bring it back to original later if I want to. Here's a few pictures showing the temporary setup. I bought a rotary table as well for it that I'll put a stepper motor on too. I might go crazy and even mount a platform to the vertically mounted rotary table with yet another mini rotary table for 5th axis cnc machining. At that point I'm just having fun and seeing what I'm capable of doing. A thing you might be interested in....my friend is attempting to help me with collets (since the VN C and Hardinge 5V ones are so crazy expensive). He's attempting to mill down some non-hardened R8 collets to the VN C specs. Fingers crossed that it works!

@Uglydog

Sorry for the delay! You are correct, the motor is off to the right. It's currently a 1HP single phase 115v 1725RPM motor, but I'm actually playing with the idea of swapping it out with a 3PH motor and VFD so I can control the speed with Mach3 as part of the CNC.

 

[Uglydog]

I don't know anything about CNC.
However, instead of converting R8s you may have better luck with making some end mill holders.

Daryl
MN

 

[matthewsx]

I’d leave it manual. Without ball screws you’re not likely to have much success. Dealing with backlash is easy by hand but much harder with steppers.

John

 

[sdy5001]

The CNC conversion sounds awesome. Where are you located? If you haven't got the welding done yet and need someone to do it I'd be happy to do it for you...

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