Table movement

A beautiful workshop, too clean for me I'd have stuff scattered everywhere in 5 minutes. My workshop is a small corner of the car garage, such that the car parks right up against the lathe, so that I can shut the roller door, and to use the lathe I have to back the car out. As much as I would like a mill I just don't have room for one, Im am in the process, and it's early days yet, of building a milling attachment that mounts on the lathe bed. Even the small band saw has to live outside in the lean to, which is really the wood shed and steel rack. I have bought a grinder, but have yet to find somewhere to mount it.
 
So.

With everything set up I finally plugged the mill into power for the first time.

After a while setting up I touched the mill table and got a small shock, like static.

Then I tried the ON switch. My ELCB circuit breaker switch shut off all the power. Lights.....out.

There is something wrong with the electrics on the mill. Very wrong. BZZZZZZZTTTT wrong.

I've emailed the seller; we'll see what happens from here.

Keep you all posted!
 
A further update.

So the seller sent out an electrician to have a look at the electrical problem for me. Prompt and polite service.

A 79 year old electrician. No problem with that; Daryl was a really nice guy. We chatted, had a cup of coffee, drove back to his workshop to pick up some gear he had forgotten. Drove back to my place. I did the heavy lifting. Daryl tires easily.

After a fruitless hour with a multi-meter, we spent another hour removing the motor and switch gear. He took the whole lot away to his place to have a further look.

We really struggled to get the head to tilt, and I ended up spending another hour lubricating it and replacing the ****ty nylocs with proper grade 8.8 nuts and spring washers after he'd gone.

The whole process took four pleasant hours. I was in no hurry.

In the end he took the whole lot back to the seller and returned with a motor and switch block off another mill they had that actually worked. The problem was an internal short in my original motor. Clearly such things are not checked in the factory. Pity that can kill you...

My lesson in all this is that if you buy cheap and cheerful, you have to prepared to commission it, which essentially involves a strip and rebuild. For me, who chooses to restore old cars for fun, this is fine. I'm never happier than pulling something to bits and puzzling over how I can make it work better.

I think that once I've gone over this mill thoroughly I'm going to be very happy with it.

Thanks for all your replies and interest.
 
I spent a fun morning continuing the setup.

Mounted the new motor. Happily it works properly and I didn't die.

Finished tidying the cables for the X Axis power feed and the DRO. Mounted the DRO screen. Reset the soft and hard limiters on the X Axis.

Removed the quill coarse feed. The taper inside was coated with paint and crap. So I wire wheeled it then put in in the lathe and cleaned it up with a file, then emery paper before reinstalling it. I've been putting nice high tensile washers under all of the various nuts and screws too which makes everything turn just that much more nicely.

Then set to tramming it.

Quite a lot of frustration squaring the tool axis with the lathe bed. Try as I might I can't get better than around 6 thou run-out on anything that I can mount in my ER32 collet. In the end I used the keyless chuck off my lathe and a 1/2" drill bit with a set square. It's not perfect but probably within a couple of thou at 120mm length. I have a couple of rods of 12mm HSS ground tool steel coming and I hope I can do better with them.

Then I mounted a 1/10000" gauge in the chuck and trammed the vice. It's at about 1.5/10000" over the 4" vice face, so I called it a day.

So it should now be close enough to do some initial machining with a view to seeing what sort of precision I can achieve.
 
Forgot to mention. While I was buying some coolant and new oil for both my lathe and mill I kinda might of bought a baby power bandsaw.

BS-4A. Bargain at $462 and allegedly will cut up to 100x150mm. It won't see that sort of treatment from me but it will be a hell of a lot better than the 300mm cut off saw I'm currently using.

Unboxing that is tomorrow's task.
 
Abowie said:
Forgot to mention. While I was buying some coolant and new oil for both my lathe and mill I kinda might of bought a baby power bandsaw.

BS-4A. Bargain at $462 and allegedly will cut up to 100x150mm. It won't see that sort of treatment from me but it will be a hell of a lot better than the 300mm cut off saw I'm currently using.

Unboxing that is tomorrow's task.
Click to expand...
 
Abowie said:
Forgot to mention. While I was buying some coolant and new oil for both my lathe and mill I kinda might of bought a baby power bandsaw.

BS-4A. Bargain at $462 and allegedly will cut up to 100x150mm. It won't see that sort of treatment from me but it will be a hell of a lot better than the 300mm cut off saw I'm currently using.

Unboxing that is tomorrow's task.
Click to expand...

Yes a band saw uis the way to go. Very similar to mine I got the BS-5V. It has done a lot of work. I have modified it so it will cut vertical a swell as horizontal and have cut sections outside it's normal envelope, I also cut a lot of hardwood (fire wood) and had no real trouble, other than the blade jumping off occasionally, but I think it's only when the blade snags and then jumps.

BTW What part of Adelaide are you in? I'm in Eden hills.5050.
 
An update.

Cleaning, oiling etc were unhelpful.

So I pulled out the Y axis gib today. The fixed side was machine ground, but the moving side... looked like it had been done by a 5 year old armed with a 4" angle grinder.

As the gib is wedge shaped I figured grinding the moving side could only make things better, so I did so with a bit of elbow grease and a couple of my Grandpa's whetstones which are the best part of a century old.

I didn't take it all the way flat because I was leery of taking off too much material but I blued it and ended up with about 70% flat, with scattered gouges many thou deep.

I also deburred everything I could get to. Initially I was going to strip the whole X and Y axis but had stymied myself using red Loctite on the grub screws for the winder handles. After I broke the head off one I changed my plan. As it turned out the Y gib seemed to be the only problem and I am very happy with the results.

Having replaced it and tightened it using a dial gauge to measure slop I am now pretty happy. It turns consistently and comfortable and with the X axis maxed out at one end I get a consistent 3 thou of slop above the gib. I have basically tuned it to give the least winding effort while maintaining that 3 thou, which is what you get with the gib so tight it locks down the Y axis.

To finish the day I made nice knurled heads for the X and Y lock down screws, which makes things much prettier.
 
Red Loctite just needs a little heat to break free, a propane torch or heat gun should do it.

Cheers,

John
 
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