Milling machine leftovers, what to do?

S

Str8jacket

H-M Supporter - Gold Member
H-M Supporter Gold Member
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May 17, 2015
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My big mill went to machine tool heaven, it ended up too big and costly, time consuming job to repair. I have replaced it with a smaller foot print machine, and 1/3 of the weight.
All i have left now is the massive table off the old mill, the big horizontal over arm and the horizontal milling tools and bars. I also have a heap of horizontal cutters i had collected. But my new mill doesnt have a horizontal drive.
I am thinking of building the table into my welding bench, it is 1500mm long, i have all the clamping tools in 18mm t slot which doesnt fit my new mill either. Any good suggestions on transforming the left overs, i have done a google image search for ideas but end with loads of adds.
 
18mm is pretty close to 3/4", if I'm not mistaken. I usually do smaller work, model building. . . In that arena, I have both an Atlas benchtop horizontal and a (HF) WunHungLo vertical. Most of my tooling has been aranged so that it is "interchangable" between the two machines. Within limits, of course. The drive mechanism on the Atlas is MT-2, on the HF machine R-8.

I have a fairly large(for me) angle plate. Solid 90*, not adjustable. The angle plate allows vertical work to be done on the Atlas and horizontal work on the HF machine. If I have a quick horizontal job and the Atlas has something already set up, I can do a lot of the work on the HF machine. And vice versa.

I originally bought the HF machine as a rigid drill press. It will run slower than a regular drill press and is more stable. I find that drilling tap size(#49 for 2-56) holes in acrylics on a high speed machine melts the inside of the hole. The cheap vertical mill does much better. I have since come to the conclusion that a vertical mill does a few jobs better easier than the horizontal. Not enough to justify a Bridgeport or the like but most of the time my tolerances are loose enough for the HF.

I don't know if my experiences with both will help you that much. But a few "adapters", R-8 or Morse or whatever will make much of the tooling fit another machine.

.
 
Contact my Mate as he buys, sells and repairs used machinery. He may buy it or know someone who will. He has a mate (friend, lol) with a big Churchill way grinder who may need them, named Richard. Give him a G-Day from me.

Phillip Fehring
P & L Machine Tools Pty. Ltd.
24 Bostock Court
Thomastown Victoria 3074
Australia
Tel: +613 9466 3655
Mob: 0412 555 326
machtool@bigpond.net.au
 
One very expensive boily bench. But it has already proven extremely handy.
 
And there is still this bit, but i may have a future project idea for it. It is the over arm (think that is what its called) for the horizontal set up. And as an idea of scale the mill next to it weighs nearly 2t

20201009_183702.jpg
 
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