Hi, I'm new to all this I hate computers, I've been in engineering for 25 and always had a mill at home but always a chocolate machine so last year I bought a proper one as I call it, as I googled and came across this site I read the threads on beavers and a guy called robonthemoor saying how he was going to look at one in Leicester (where I am) and when he posted the pictures I realised the machine I bought was the one he based his thread on, whoops treading on toes and all that. It is an excellent machine but it came with its issues, I had to convert the whole machine from 415v to 240v that was everything, main drive, knee lift and on and on and on, it's up and running and I think it's far more sturdy than the Bridgeport. The seller at miles-Platts said it was a BT40 so I bought some tooling only for it to turn out to be an int40, I could do with a manual for the drive if anyone knows where I could get one.👍🏻

When I converted the machine I basically stripped out every wire and switch, the only thing left was the 240 transformer and the 24v dc setup for the air and hydraulic setup, I started by replacing all the motors for single phase which was easy as they were all standard metric fittings and went in from there, the variable speed setup on mine is hydraulic centrifugal belt system much like the Bridgeport but with hydraulic cylinders controlling the belt placement, if you want pictures Bob I can send them to you if it helps ?

Play in the spindle, Yes that would be because the upper bearing (middle?) was like it was filled with jelly beans. I dropped the spindle this morning. Watched bridgeport spindle removal , but the Beaver was slightly different, ,With the quill at its normal fully up position. the locking ring on the Quill end had two square recesses. each had a grub screw going vertically up into the quill which I loosened then unscrewed the ring anticlockwise. I locked the quill with the downfeed lock clamp. I had to use a screwdriver and small hammer to get the ring moving. Its a very fine thread and was maybe 20 turns, then the ring dropped slightly but didnt fall off. I thought I hadnt unscrewed it fully but I had.

Then like the bridgeport video I used the drawbar top tube to tap down , I just tapped the top of the drawbar and the spindle slowly dropped out , bearings and all, the drawbar went below the top and I had to use an extension, as it is now, ive dropped the spindle onto a wooden block on the two main bearings visible. I put my hands on the bottom one, felt ok, the top one wobbled like drunken sailor . There might be another bearing even further up , but I lost heart .When I bought this machine I looked the man in the eye and said, Is there anything I need to do to it . No.

So I need a new set of spindle bearings, any recomendations ? Much appreciated.

For the main bearings, I went for:-

these

For the top bearing I went for:-

this

You might as well replace all the bearings at the same time. The cost is quite reasonable.

I had ended up replacing all the bearings in the motor, quill and head in the course of my rebuild, but my machine hadn't been treated kindly.

I've got two 10" blanks cut to make a pair of poly-V pulleys to replace the originals, where a previous owner used a crowbar to move the belt, but I haven't got around to that just yet.

Most motors can be refigured from star to delta, at the terminal block. If that is not possible you will have to dismantle the motor and locate a largish lump often at the non drive end, it will need cutting open and three extra leads brought out to the terminal box. Any rewind shop will do this for you for an hours pay, once done then use an inverter. There has been several very good article on this site converting motors from star to delta, with good clear pictures and other details. I've found coolant pumps can be easily converted to run on 240 volt single phase using a 4 micro farad capacitor, again it needs to be reconnected.I have altered pump motors for my friends, and all it needed to do was to alter the links in the terminal box a ten minute job.John

VBRP motor 2HP 240V conversion not possible

The motor did not have a junction box and I hoped to find the star point by distmanteling but all I could see was lots of shellac and cloth tape.

to dismantel I dropped the head 90 degrees, and undid the three retaining hex bolts which allowed the motor and triple pulley wheels to come out as one. The wires had to be cut. to split the motor casing the bearings are held by a plate inside both shells so I had to undo every nut and screw visible before the back came off. I couldnt get the key out of the shaft but it did fit through the housing, the front housing was on a lip and only came off by knocking it out after removing the rotor from the rear.

Cant find the star point so will re-assemble and sell as whole and buy a 1HP 180V DC ex-treadmill motor for £50 on ebay and a 8A 180V DC controller for £50 . But I need to fix the bearings first,

The spindle bearings which first took me here , Ive had the spindle looked at (thank you ) and it has some high spots like a bearing was put on crooked, now smoothed off with a stone. so Im optomistic.

John i cant find any way to disagree, so yes i will , there is a rewinder 30 mins away, but the dc motor looks so lovely, and as a tinkerer i want to re-create. but you are right , I bet the rewinder will have it done in 5 minutes for £20.

When I replaced the bearings on my beaver spindle, I had (stupidly) assumed that the damage to the originals was mostly due to water ingress. Over time I'd got annoyed by the drumming noise from the head at top speed and assumed it was due to a previous a***h*le owner changing the speed with a crowbar on the belt rather than loosening the motor clamp. I'd recently noticed that vertical movement of the quill was slightly stiffer with the spindle in some positions.

Today I needed to do some milling and distracted myself by putting an electric dial gauge (available at an Interweb auction site near you) on the side of the extended and clamped quill while rotating the spindle by hand. I measured 2.1 tenths of side to side movement on the quill every revolution. Might not sound much, but the quill is a fairly solid lump of metal…

I took the quill out and measured the runout at The top end of the spindle. Five Thou!

This caused me to remove the spindle from the quill and spend most of the day with a 2"x2.5" steel bar as a beam, two 10" G cramps for holding and bending and a couple of V-blocks for support. I left the bearings on the spindle because I'd risked enough damage by tapping the spindle out of the quill (whacking with a PLASTIC dead blow hammer).

After several hours I got the total deflection down from 5 thou to half a thou and called it good enough. re-assembly was much easier than disassembly due to warming the quill up to 120°C in the oven. It just slips on over the bearings when warmed up.

After putting the assembly back in the mill there was still some movement at the end of the quill as the spindle rotated. 10 micro inches. The mill, with spindle, isn't noticeably louder than just the belts and pulleys alone at top speed, so I'm happy that I've got that irritation fixed. There are a couple of 8" dia lumps of aluminium waiting for me to turn into Poly-V pulleys once I've convinced myself that the tiny belt the calculations suggest can really transmit 2hp.

Tomorrow I might even get back to the job I meant to do today.

Hi Peter, I replaced the spindle bearings deep side in . but as you say there is very little confirmed data about the correct method. The upper bearing was a straight ball with no tilt . I have since sold the beaver as it was too large for me and bought a Downham mini jig borer for light precision milling. hope that helps.

qcad does all that for about £30. (The free version is no longer available but there is an effective free fork called Librecad if you're on a budget.)

Both support layers (ie multiple transparent sheets stacked on top of each other that can be made visible or not) and a layer can be an image (photograph) or a CAD line drawing.

The tracing technique is easy enough: take a photo and import it into Layer 0. Then create Layer 1, and trace lines over the photographic image. Any number of layers can be added if that helps, for example to hold construction lines or text.

What makes tracing tricky is that photographs measure nothing and don't understand scale. They're just a good looking unreliable blob; no dimensional information plus lens distortions. A CAD package is the exact opposite – everything is specified precisely; the drawings are entirely informative.

So you can't do a straight tracing and automatically get good results, rather you have to translate the photo into sensible CAD dimensions using the image as a guide. Accuracy may not matter if you only want a cleaned up line drawing, but it's more work if you need accurate engineering drawings. For what it's worth, my preferred approach to this sort of job is to make a rough pencil drawing labelled with accurately measured dimensions and then use the dimensions to create a CAD drawing. I use qcad for 2D and Fusion360 for 3D.

As LibreCAD is free, give it a try and see how you get on.

Dave

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Dave,

You have me a little confused :

I have just refreshed my "QCAD"

QCAD 3.21.1

These packages contain QCAD, bundled with a free trial of QCAD Professional. The trial runs 15min at a time and can then be restarted. You can order QCAD Professional from our Online Shop and download the full version immediately. Alternatively, you can choose to remove the trial and use the free QCAD Community Edition instead.

**LINK**

https://www.qcad.org/en/download

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MichaelG.