I would fabricate a frame out of rectangular section steel tube with an inner “hole” to fit around the base of the mill and a height equal too or just below the height of the base. This then extends  out to make a platform to stand on with a ply or similar top and ramped edges to reduce trip hazards. Four triangular corner plates (and spacers if required) connect the frame to he existing holes in the base of the mill.

Robert

I love your wall posters. Where did you get them?

On 13 July 2024 at 12:21 Sonic Escape Said

How about if I use 4 plates on every corner.

 

Over-complicated, ineffective and needs good welding.

The mill will not be likely to tip fore and aft, only side to side. Channel will allow a much longer extension so much less likely to tip than small plates. The channel will also be much stiffer than plate. The channel only needs a nut tack welded in place, so quality of weld doesn’t matter. Using channel with a nut means the mill only has to be raised by the height of the channel, say an inch or two. With a plate and welded stud the mill needs to be raised the height of stud, which will be the height of the base plus height of nut and washer. The mill is far more likely to tip over when fitting the plates, which would be ironic.

Andrew

Floor heating, eh? Eeeh, luxury!

You could use plates as you suggest, but 12mm or better 16mm thick, then rather than trying to weld studs to it, which mean lifting the mill that much further, drill and tap M12 or M16 holes in them to take studs.

Make the studs of correct thread length, or use stock studding but put a dot of weld on it, to prevent it winding down into the wooden floor.

However, such plates would need be very wide to remove the tipping hazard.  So really, channels or square-section tubes projecting away to the sides of the machine are the better option, but do consider these may present trip hazards. You could join their ends with cross-members to form a rectangular frame, which will be better and safer. Since their joints are taking very little load the welds don’t need be to shipbuilding standards, though you could use angles and bolted joints instead.

To provide for bolting the machine to a frame made from tube, it may be feasible to bolt heavy-duty angles to the inside faces of the longitudinals, to give ready access for the fastenings. The main load is on the tube, the nuts and bolts basically hold everything together against spreading. This needs the base bolt-holes far enough in from the edge of the base of course.

Another option is to screw thick plates or flat bars to the tops of the tube, drilled and tapped through into the tube, then the bolts go down through the machine base to screw into the plates.

How to screw these bars to the tube so you don’t have their heads below the underside? The method I used for securing my workshop’s  hoist columns, of 50 X 50 X 3mm steel tube, to the wall was to drill right through for the masonry fastenings, then use a cone-drill to enlarge the outer holes to pass a socket to engage the screw-heads, leaving the fastenings neatly concealed within the tubes.

You could indeed develop this principle to use cylindrical cross-hole nuts (which you’d have to make specially) held in the full-diameter cross-drilling, rather as some furniture fastenings work.

On 13 July 2024 at 22:45 Pete Rimmer Said:

Personally I think you are worrying over nothing. Stick the table on it, wind it to the end and see if ytou can rock the machine by lifting as hard as you can on the end of the table. If you’re like me you should be able to get 60kg of lift on it at least. If you can’t start a topple then it’s fair say you’re not going to tip it with anything you put on the table.

As Risk Assessments go, this is far too optimistic.   It’s well known that machine tools are top heavy and prone to fall over.  Bent handles are one of the things to watch for when buying second-hand, because untrained removers often lose control when the machine is lifted after being unbolted from the floor.

Be very careful doing a rock test too, because if a machine this size does topple it will do a lot of damage!  Might not be a bad thing if it fell and destroyed Sonic’s underfloor heating, because then he could stop worrying about it and bolt the machine to the floor through the holes provided!

The photo suggests the machine has an usually small base for it’s size, so I think Sonic is right to worry.   He hasn’t told us what size of work he intends doing on the mill.   Unlikely it will topple if small jobs only are centred on the table and the table and head aren’t traversed far.    But this is a serious bit of kit capable of machining large objects!  Presumably Sonic bought it for milling something big and heavy like an engine block,  and using it for that without improving stability would be foolhardy.   Everything I do can be lifted on and off my mill by an elderly weakling.   Sonic’s beast is more into Cutting Edge Australia territory, where everything is lifted with a yard crane, forklift truck or overhead gantry.

On 13 July 2024 at 18:53 larry phelan 1 Said:

Seems to me that machines that size, not exactly D-I-Y stuff, are intended to be bolted to the floor !

 

I agree. I had an Elliott Omnimill which is probably even more top heavy and I wasn’t overly concerned about it tipping though.

I now have a Warco VMC which is much smaller. I wasn’t concerned about it tipping but I did put a couple of large wood screws through it into the floor just in case it wanted to “walk” anywhere due to vibration! 😆

I’m with Pete and Dave Wootton, just use the machine.

Machine tools can be top heavy. But catastrophes occur when moving machine tools, not when using them.

Andrew

On 14 July 2024 at 13:30 Sonic Escape Said:

I’m afraid I worried for nothing. I put some 70kg on the other similar mill that stays outside…

 

 

On 14 July 2024 at 08:03 SillyOldDuffer Said:

He hasn’t told us what size of work he intends doing on the mill.   Unlikely it will topple if small jobs only are centred on the table and the table and head aren’t traversed far.    But this is a serious bit of kit capable of machining large objects!  Presumably Sonic bought it for milling something big and heavy like an engine block,  and using it for that without improving stability would be foolhardy.   Everything I do can be lifted on and off my mill by an elderly weakling.   Sonic’s beast is more into Cutting Edge Australia territory, where everything is lifted with a yard crane, forklift truck or overhead gantry.

 

I plan to use the mill for small things. Nothing heavier than 10kg max. I bought such a large machine because it think is cool to have one and to fix it. And it was scrap metal price. And I have enough space for it. Ok, I end up with two … 🙂

This is good Risk Assessment stuff:

• A potential risk, toppling, is identfied
• Advice is taken
• The free-standing mill, supported safely by a crane, is tested with an 80kg load on a fully extended table and found to be stable
• In practice, the mill is to be loaded no more than 10kg, an 8x safety factor.

Hurrah!

A common cause of machines toppling over in a big workshop is fork-lift drivers accidentally bashing into them.   No evidence Sonic has been tempted into buying a fork-lift yet, but I’m sure he will…

🙂

Dave