Looking for advice on a small (ish) mill

Well the mill has made the trek across the mountain. We got his trailer tires pumped up and drove to the rental center. And in less than 5 minutes had it lifted off his trailer. Drove his out from under it, and backed my trailer under it. Tied her down. Stopped twice over the mtn to check the straps. All went well. She's now in my "needs some love" shed at my shop. I'll finish those outer walls so it'll be more protected. I'll pick it up and drive it into the shop in the next month and start de-rusting her. I picked it up with my skidsteer at the shop and drove it right Into the shed. (just to ease worry, we had wood blocks under the ram ways to protect them from getting hurt.)
 

Attachments

  • 20190629_125720.jpg
    20190629_125720.jpg
    63.6 KB · Views: 58
  • 20190629_131720.jpg
    20190629_131720.jpg
    71.2 KB · Views: 58
  • 20190629_185033.jpg
    20190629_185033.jpg
    67.4 KB · Views: 57
Right on, I should have known you'd be wearing a utilikilt:cool:

Haha that is my machinist buddy. He's a stud, he's the one who gave me the mill. Knee high boots and a utilikilt are what he wears everyday. And that insulated coat.... On a 98 degree summer day...

I'm going to start cleaning this week and see what her condition is.
 
You've done well Young Jedi!

I agree with everything above. Block it in place. As you can't move the knee, I cant very well tell you to run the knee up to support the head, but otherwise you're on your way.

W/R/T the electronics, etc, start learning yourself on CURRENT State-Of-The-Art controls. I'm not in much of a position to contribute much there, other than to say this should be one of the easier updates as you have everything there, now just need to interface to modern computer hardware/software.

Yeah, I'm a little jealous!
 
Right on, I should have known you'd be wearing a utilikilt:cool:

You might want to give these guys a call and see if their kit will work for you.


Cheers,

John
I missed the kilt part! I LOVE my Workingman's Kilt, but I'm forbidden from wearing it in the shop, apparently it's too much like shorts and shorts are forbidden as well.

The Snap-On man at the shop shared that bit, my kilt was costume for Snap-On Franchisee Conferences. They might not have known my name, but everybody there knew who I was-LOL
 
I started messing with things tonight after family went to sleep. I live about a mile from my shop, so I can sneak down here quick. With the knee not moving, I pulled off the felt wiper cover, it's cracked: has been over tightened. And the wiper itself is dead. No surprise there. The flathead adjustment screw on the gib is SEIZED. I filled the hole with wd-40 and in about 7-8 seconds it's gone, so it's going somewhere, hopefully that's a good sign. I'm going to let it soak overnight, then in the morning, I'll put my hand impact driver on it for 1 hit and see what she says. I talked to my buddy and he seemed to have a memory that this was a 1 part machine, so he actually never moved the knee the whole time he ran it... So he said it's been probably 15 years since this knee has moved.

I chipped the metal chips out of the T-slots tonight (flat blade screw driver and a hammer)... They were packed. The t slots were completely full. Now those are out and I started cleaning the table a bit. It's in great shape. I'll clean it up a bit more tomorrow in the light and take pics.

I plugged in the computer that came with this thing, and it works! Hahaha. Didn't expect that. I plugged it into my flat-screen I use for my security cameras, and the dang thing works. I figured you guys would get a kick out of this. On the screen, the jogs work, and I loaded a program the shop ran, and it ran through all the numbers in their g-code. Haha. I'm just watching it sitting here laughing. When the mill can get the right power to it (it's in my forklift shed right now), I'll plug the computer in and see if this thing will move it. Check out this computer and the DOS program...
 

Attachments

  • 20190701_230657.jpg
    20190701_230657.jpg
    62.1 KB · Views: 37
  • 20190701_230702.jpg
    20190701_230702.jpg
    65.7 KB · Views: 35
Nice, I'd make an image of that hard drive right away. Also copy the program off to floppy disk, if the machine works as-is it will give you time to plan the conversion to modern stuff.

John
 
Nice, I'd make an image of that hard drive right away. Also copy the program off to floppy disk

Agreed, however... Where am I going to find a floppy disc?! Haha. I haven't even seen one in the past 20 years... I bet my parents have some stashed on their basement...... Time to go digging.
 
Agreed, however... Where am I going to find a floppy disc?! Haha. I haven't even seen one in the past 20 years... I bet my parents have some stashed on their basement...... Time to go digging.

So, as a network admin here's how I would handle this.

1. Remove hard drive from this machine and make an image using whatever cloning software you like. You'll need a machine that can handle old IDE disks though, should be one at a thrift store nearby.

2. While the disk is still attached to the machine you're cloning from also copy the CAM program/s to the local hard drive and/or USB.

3. Try to get it working on the machine you used for cloning the original drive, old PC's are cheap/free and it's likely the software will only work on something close to it's own era. Running on a virtual machine is possible but probably not likely given the need to interface directly to hardware.

I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time on this but it's probably worth a few hours to preserve the original stuff. Even if you never use it there may be important things there like offsets for backlash, etc.

Cheers,

John
 
Nix the WD40 and use PB Blaster instead. For this type of application it will do a much better job of penetrating, loosening and lubricating.
 
Back
Top