Risers for my MiniMill - what metal to choose?

Steve,

Would you mind taking another picture of your lathe arrangement? I'm curious to see the rest of it.

Terry
 
When I had my X2 mini mill mounted on a workbench (it has it's own stand now), I raised it with two strips made by stacking several inches of leftover laminate flooring. The stuff is very solid and doesn't give at all.
 
Steve,

Would you mind taking another picture of your lathe arrangement? I'm curious to see the rest of it.

Terry

Hi Terry, I'm assuming you meant "milling machine arrangement". Unless you meant my lathe - which is a Rivett watchmaker's lathe.

I started by building a 2' x 2' bench, and drilled a large cookie sheet for the mounting bolts. I ended up using 1" steel spacers to hold the machine up. In the first photo, the reason you see eight spacers and not just four, is because four of them are 1" high and the other four are 1-1/2" high. I wasn't sure which set would hold the Y-axis handwheel up from the lip of the cookie sheet - I mean chip tray. It turned out that the 1" high ones were perfect.
I'm sure I'm just nitpicking, but I would prefer to have the whole under-surface of the machine's mounting tabs sitting on a solid riser - not just a portion of it. Yep, I'm stupidly anal!

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Nice setup!

I have something pretty similar for my HF mini-mill. Used an 18"x25" (plated steel) oil drip pan under the mill, no risers, with the mill's Y axis parallel to the 18" dimension. The Y handwheel is set just outside the lip of the pan.

I spread silicone adhesive on the bottom of the mill base before doing the final bolt-down, so that if I ever want to use major amounts of coolant, there won't be any leakage down the bolt holes.

This setup has served me very well for something like 5 or 6 years. The large pan is great for catching most or all of the swarf, no matter what I'm machining. As an added bonus, I've found that the extra area of the drip pan to the sides of the mill are great places to use a Sharpie to note down X, Y and Z position information for repeated cuts, etc. Once the part is done, a quick wipe with alcohol gives me a "clean slate."

PS - one thing that kind of concerns me about your riser system is the relatively small diameter of the riser tubes you used. I'd be worried that, if you tightened the bolts much beyond snug, you could deform the MDF(?) underneath your pan. True, the washers will help spread the load a bit, but they can deform, too. Guess I'm anal in the same way you are :)
 
Steve,

No, I meant the lathe I see to the left of your milling machine :roflmao:
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Terry
 
I see where the confusion came from now. I was directing my question at stevecmo's post.
 
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