Van Norman #6 - got it running.

[WalterC]

Was going to be scrapped or sold. It sat on CL for a long time, so I bought it thinking it might be a loss, but it turned out the mill looked worse than it was, so I took it apart and replaced bearings- made a few small parts, made adjustments and it is running good. I was surprised to see the X has only .006" backlash, the Y .009".
I made a collet with a straight 1/2" shaft with a 7/16-18 drawbar, and now I'm making a horizontal arbor. I'm still working on which direction to turn for collets. The 5v collets are out of the question due to cost. The ER20 system looks good.





Serial# 5149-6

 

[BaronJ]

Hi Walter,

It looks to have been a nice find. Is that mill one where the head swivels and turns into a vertical one ?

 

[Superburban]

That is cool. You did a great job cleaning/fixing it up.

If I were making a holder for a colet, I would go with the ER series. Buy the caps, and colets, and make a few holders.

 

[Cal Haines]

Was going to be scrapped or sold. It sat on CL for a long time, so I bought it thinking it might be a loss, but it turned out the mill looked worse than it was, so I took it apart and replaced bearings- made a few small parts, made adjustments and it is running good. I was surprised to see the X has only .006" backlash, the Y .009".
I made a collet with a straight 1/2" shaft with a 7/16-18 drawbar, and now I'm making a horizontal arbor. I'm still working on which direction to turn for collets. The 5v collets are out of the question due to cost. The ER20 system looks good.

View attachment 275881

Hi Walter,

Congratulations on your new toy. Nice looking paint job!

X and Y backlash are adjustable, but I don't think you need to tighten it up any beyond what you have. If you're seeing the same backlash in the middle as you do at the ends, then the screws don't have much wear.

What bearings did you replace?

An ER collet chuck is the way to go, but ER-20 (which only goes up to 13mm) is on small the small side. I think ER-32, which goes up to 3/4 inch (19mm), would be a better match for the machine. You can get ER collets, nuts and nut spanners from CTC. I have a number of ER collet chucks and collet sets from CTC, and I'm very pleased with them. One problem with CTC is that they're located in Hong Kong, so it can take over a month for your tools to show up.

You can save a little money by getting metric ER collets. A metric ER-32 collet has a 1mm grip range, so where one collet leaves off, the next begins. However, you really have to clamp down on a 7mm collet to grip a 1/4" (6.35mm) endmill.

 

[WalterC]

I replaced all the bearings in the gear head. There were 4 bearings in there of substantial size. The spindle head had previously replaced bearings (Good Timkens) - they did clean up well and had even wear on the races, so I kept them.
It appears the biggest 5v collet I can make would have a straight bore of 5/8" (Correct me if I'm wrong), and the largest ER collet holder I can find with that smaller sized shaft is an ER20 style. The ER25 and larger ones require a 3/4" or larger bore. ?


Looking at the 1" arbor, you can see the 5v collet capacity.

 

[Cal Haines]

I think that the largest full-depth collet for the Van Norman "C" spindle (aka Hardinge 5V) was 9/16". Van Norman sold collets up to 5/8" and Hardinge still makes 5V collets up to 3/4"; anything over 9/16 is stepped. There's no need for the collet chuck to have a through hole equal to the maximum size that the collet system can handle. Neither of my ER-32 chucks have 3/4" through holes. One has an MT2 shank with a though hole that's about 1/4". An ER-32 collet chuck for C spindle would have to have the entire body of the collet in front of the face of the spindle, so you loose a little working space, but I think it's a good trade off.

 

[BROCKWOOD]

Nice!!! Your Spindexer looks right at home on that mill. Too bad the 5C collets that go with the Spindexer could not be made to fit the mill itself. I really never wanted to have more than 1 good set of collets for all my needs. Oh well, we adapt as needed.