Newly purchased Gorton 0-16 Mill, looking for some advice

HFMGarage

HFMGarage

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Hello everyone, new member here with my recently acquired Gorton 0-16 vertical mill. The machine is in surprisingly good condition for its age, with almost no noticeable wear and original paint still mostly intact. I'm looking for advice on what companies could do a spindle re-taper to R-8 or something more common than the original 8d Gorton Taper collets it uses. I luckily have a complete set of the Gorton collets so it's currently useful as is but I would like to future proof this machine and be able to get more tooling. The Gorton Yahoo Group went offline in spring of 2020 so I can't really find much info on these machines.
 

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Making a new spindle custom tube to the same quality would be a massive endeavor, machining, heat treat, then cylindrical grinding. The cost could easily exceed going to a used Bridgeport.

You could get a sleeve off of the used market or repair dealers for a small benchtop mill drill with an R8 socket. No certainty that there would be enough meat on the outside to grind/machine down to fit the existing bearings.

How good are your lathe skills? What do you have for a lathe? You may well just make the missing tapper attachments from mild steel. i.e. Drillchuck, face mill, boring head, fly cutter and so on. See the link for ideas for making R8 shanks. http://www.frets.com/HomeShopTech/Projects/R8Arbors/r8arbors.html
 
So supposedly later models of this machine actually came in R8 from the factory. There used to be a company that could modify the original Gorton Taper spindle to R8 or B&S taper for around $200-$300 which seemed to be the common practice, unfortunately all references to this company such as there name and what was involved was lost when the Gorton Yahoo group went offline, I'm really hoping someone in this forum might know that information cause it would sure save a lot of trouble.

I could definitely look into replacing the spindle but I would like that to be kind of be a last resort as there in nothing wrong with the current one other than it's unusual taper, it runs very true. I guess I could probably have some custom tooling made if necessary, the 8d collets are only slightly smaller than R8 so I could modify them, only weird thing is the 3 flat sides Gorton collets have.

Honestly I don't have much experience with a lathe so this is probably way out of my league. I do own a very old 16 inch LeBlond but it's not operational at the moment. The chuck is junk and I have to get a new back plate made because I can't find a 9 inch plain back chuck and the spindle thread is very unusual, I plan to just put a new 10 inch chuck on it.
 
Hi and welcome,

I used to have a 1-22 MasterMill so I know the Gorton quality.

Since you have collets there's no rush to change anything out unless your spindle bearings are toast and you'll be pulling it anyway. You could just get an ER32 straight shank collet chuck and run it that way if you see a need for a wide range of cutting tools.

Oh, and keep the pictures coming....

John
 
The only company I've heard of that still exists, and regrinds to R8 is Index. And so far as I know, they only do Index machines. Now that isn't useful to you maybe. But it might be.
 
Thanks for everyone's input! I do have a full set of collets that go from 1/8" to 1/2" with a couple spares so it might not be worth modifying the spindle, or at least not until it becomes necessary.

From what I see it looks like Gorton only went up to 1/2" collets on these, so for any kind of tool holder / collet chuck I'm limited somewhat by size. Does anyone know a good source for a 1/2" straight shank ER 32 or 40 collet chuck? or have one they'd like to sell? I'm also looking for a drill chuck but those seem to readily available
 
Frankly if you have all the standard sizes from 1/8" to 1/2" I can't see the need for an ER chuck unless you think removing and replacing ER collets might be easier than changing out the Gorton ones- ? Or do you want bigger than 1/2"? I wouldn't go too large. You can do a lot with 1/2" envelope
I believe ER 25 to 1/2" straight shank chucks exist, not sure about ER 32. ER25 goes up to 5/8" size collets
-M
 
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I guess my thoughts are the ER collets seem slightly easier to use and would reduce wear and tear on the expensive Gorton collets, plus then I could have a slightly wider variety of sizes, it would be really nice if this could hold up to 5/8 or 3/4" for some larger endmills that I already own. I might just turn an ER-32 holder down to 1/2" once I finally get my old LeBlond up and running again.

I also would eventually like to have a fly cutter or face mill made to fit this machine for milling small cylinder heads, although straight shank versions would be easier and likely significantly cheaper.
 
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Making what you have work will be better than trying to modify that machine. Especially if it’s already a runner.
 
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