Happy Sunday morning!
Last night I did actually do some milling with the K&T as you can see in my previous post. I just have the cutter that came with the machine, and no clamps for the table, so I c-clamped a 2X4 to the table and managed to cut it. That was a wonderful thing.
After messing around Friday night and yesterday morning, doing no real good (took the speed panel off again!) it finally sunk in that the knee being low on oil might be causing all of my problems. It appears that this machine does after all have a start lever. It's actually on the knee. When there is enough oil in the knee, the knee sends a squirt of oil through a hydraulic line to the mechanism on the speed panel that pushes the start yoke out to disengage the brake. Once I figured out that the oil level might be causing my problems, I started hunting for where to add the oil. Well, that only took me the rest of the day yesterday. After the umpteenth time going through the lube manual and finding absolutely nothing that was a fill hole, I had a light bulb moment:
You take the above panel off and pour your oil in. I didn't even realize that panel came off until I saw the arrow in the manual and then went out and whacked it with a screwdriver. Of course it went flying off, luckily it hit the floor without breaking! The gears inside that panel are (I believe) the feed change gears. I swapped two of the gears around and the table speed changed by about 50%. Unfortunately I got absolutely nothing besides the mill when I bought it, so I think the gears are long gone. they are on spline shafts so making new ones won't be particularly easy. At least I have the table moving under power and the spindle turning now.
Does anyone have any recommendations on sealing some of these panels? I was thinking of using RTV but I know that can cause foaming problems with oil. I won't be sealing anything that is below the oil line so maybe that isn't a concern.
Thanks!!
ps - Jeff - I learned a long time ago that when something is broke, it's broke. Don't be afraid to tear into it, at the worst it will still be broke when you put it back together...