2017 - The Original "What Did You Buy Today?" Mega Thread

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Thanks. Those boxes are stuffed with drills, end mills, chucking reamers, taps, gauge pins lathe tooling and lots of carbide.
 
Today i visited the tool market and did a lot of walking there were couple new vendors with machinist tools, there was lots of old tools in bad shape but did found and bought this filler set of calipers, some time back i bought inside set and now i found outside set also bought couple of pieces carbide inserts, i bought a new set of thick rubber gloves, i don't use gloves when running machines but for handling metal pieces is a must and i bought this cheap screwdriver set.
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I have an Atlas MFB little horizontal mill with a broken at the mounting ears power feed. I have one reoccurring parts job that's easiest to do on the horizontal, but I hate hand cranking. Especially on the conventional only cutting Atlas. Make a pass by cranking 50 times, drop the table, then crank like crazy back to the starting point.

So, fixing the broken Zamac box is on the project list, but near the bottom. Just whining here, but isn't it a bit annoying to see someone buy up a $1000 Atlas mill and then part it out for a total of about $4000? Sellers on eBay think the power feeds are worth $200 - $300. Guess they are if someone pays that, but I figure if mine broke, a replacement has a good chance of breaking too. One of these years I'll remake the gear box out of steel instead, but that'll be another thread or POTD.

Work around was spending a little over $500 from Eisen Machinery for a right angle head for my Bridgeport. The head, support and 1" arbor were $455 new plus a touch over $50 UPS delivered. It's one of the GEM Power units from Taiwan.

OK, initial impression is the packaging was very good. Not boxed, not double-boxed, but triple-boxed. Now the bad stuff. The arbor key is 6 mm, not 1/4" so there's about 0.014" slop with standard 1" / 1/4" keyed cutters on the arbor. Hopefully not a big deal as I'll do both climb and conventional cuts with this set up whereas the Atlas is conventional cutting only. The cutters will rotate a bit at the start of each pass and hammer the key.

I didn't shoot pictures of it, but I snapped my Bridgeport's draw bar tightening up the internal R8 arbor to the mill's spindle. I believe my draw bar was shop made by the previous mill owner (made from drill rod). It was flame-hardened at the bottom end and was threading a little hard (obviously) into the right angle head. Was using a spanner wrench in the right angle head to hold it from rotating as I was tightening the draw bar, then it got real easy to turn . . . Never had a problem with the draw bar going into collets, an ER-32 collet chuck or R8 drill chucks, so probably some crud in the treads of the right angle head.

So what to do with a broken off hardened 7/16" - 20 piece of drill rod in the R8 of the brand new right angle head? Went to the drill press with a 3/16" and 1/4" carbide end mill. Got a hole through the ~5/8" long chunk in the arbor and got it out with an EZ-out. I pulled the head apart and will say the miter gears look really stout. They are hypoid gears like rear differentials in cars/trucks which are the best for power transfer. The turn ratio is 3/4 or output shaft turning at 75% of the input shaft speed.

Making a new draw bar from CRS for now. I'll post a question about what material should be used in the Q&A forum. Single point threaded a piece of 7/16" CRS and went about 0.005" undersized on the pitch diameter. It threads well into the right angle head so hopefully no repeat issues. Lessons learned is if something isn't just falling together, maybe figure out why instead of pulling a little harder on the wrench . . .

The instructions for set up are pretty light. From the pictures (no verbiage as it's a globally sold unit), you tighten a set screw on the head which spreads the slip-on housing. Then tighten the draw bar to fully seat the head. Next, loosen the set screw and tighten a couple of cap screws. There's no explanation of set up for squaring the head to the table or aligning the arbor support.

I'll use an angle plate set sideways in my mill vise and tram it in. Then attach the arbor to the head and set it to the angle plate surface. For the support, I'll separate the two pieces and leave the attaching hardware out. Then set the lower half on the arbor and adjust the mill spindle up/down until I get contact between the two support pieces. Then turn the mill's spindle depth nut up as a hard stop so the spindle won't drop. Probably easier to post a thread with photos once I get through the process.

Anyway, here's what a touch over $500 gets you from Eisen Machinery. It's the best price I found for the 50 deg. dovetail support used for a Bridgeport and a lot cheaper than what some folks are asking on eBay for the identical unit (first two eBay links) for used ones. The rest of the eBay links are for genuine Bridgeport heads.

Bruce

https://eisenm.com/products/milling...izontal-milling-attachment-r8-w-support-arbor

https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Enco-R...919217?hash=item41cd84fdb1:g:WRYAAOSwsCFZnIKe
https://www.ebay.com/itm/RIGHT-ANGL...777377?hash=item440d4abaa1:g:pUAAAOSwI9JZ1THU
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BRIDGEPORT...100698?hash=item33db0884da:g:YZAAAOSwPK5ZiLui
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BRIDGEPORT...101050?hash=item33db08863a:g:j~IAAOSw~XpZWS-N
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BRIDGEPORT...464550?hash=item4b2d97b666:g:TnIAAOSwJQdXAorw
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Bridgeport...479391?hash=item4406f4c01f:g:veAAAOSwopRYhhXy

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Yee Haw....... my first “ You Suck” thank you thank you thank you
 
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