Chester Super Lux advice

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

So this is where your all hiding.. the New forum !

Best we leave any comments about that for the appropriate place 🙂

 

Finally got the 0.7mm shim steel for the table gib, cut to size and bonded on with loctite 480.

With it now fitting correctly I could then scrape to suit. That’s gone really well so once happy I set up the indicator to measure how well fitting the whole set up is. Once like the pic below then obviously at the other end of the saddle to make sure it was nice an even..

 

 

Well chuffed, with as much force as I could apply by hand it was less than 0.01mm at either end and at different positions on the table.. got to be worth a celebratory pint that!!

It was a little more using the gib locks, almost 0.02 locking them individually but still less than a thou, I suppose more force to squish out the light oil film.. and it’s not bedded in yet. A very happy Taff indeed.

And, all this with the gib at the the beginning of it’s adjustment !!

 

 

Anyway.. enough blowing of the trumpet.. there is the base to be getting on with..

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

I’m liking this unistrut gantry hoist jobbie, with 1 and a bit hands I managed to get the base lifted onto my welding / work table so it’s easy to work on and and got the table mounted with no more than a gentle pull on a bit of thick string..!

Should have done it years ago.

Anyway, cleaned up, some decent stoning of the dovetails etc then set up using pins in the dovetails and gauge block on the ways to rest the micrometer anvils on so all measurements are taken at exactly the same point on the pins. Basically the same way as doing the table dovetails so no need for a pic of that..

The result is –

The larger numbers are thou and the small ones are tenths. All were re taken 3 times so I’m happy they are good enough.

Pretty much 4 1/2 thou of taper between the dovetails. No wonder I could not adjust the gib!

 

Oh.. and apologies for working in mm and thou, I’ve always worked in either and I’m always flicking between the 2.. must be very confusing for those that just work in metric or in banana’s.. sorry!

 

Then set up to properly check the X – Y relationship for squareness.

With the saddle right to the front in Y and the gib inserted as best as could be given the state of everything, the Y gib was locked.

Set the square true to X and recheck .. and again for good measure.

Lock X gib.

Transfer the indicator to the side of the square, loose the locks (indicator moved a fair bit) and move the table back the 150mm of the square. Re lock the gib so I am actually measuring the fixed dovetail side.

0.05mm difference so 2 thou near enough

Now I repeated this several times and always got the same result so happy enough with that.

What I failed to do was write down which way. I knew something had to make up for the table success, isn’t that the way it’s supposed to happen??

Jim Henson’s creations have got nothing on me. I’m blaming it on the nerve pain drugs personally, it’s like having a head full of cotton wool.

I’m pretty sure it was +0.05mm at the rear (the Y fixed dovetail side is the left side of the saddle and indicator is against the right side of square) so 2 thou to come off the front of the dovetail meaning 2 of my 4 1/2 thou taper will disappear..  but .. was it.. ?  Oh dear.

Going to have to set up and do again to confirm before getting all ‘scrapey’ on it.

 

Anyway, some progress non the less !

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Hi All..

I have made some decent progress with the mill, a few issues but getting there.

I am going to wait a while before updating here in the hope that at least some of the Forum issues are resolved to allow people to navigate round it as in it’s current form people seem to be staying away.

It just took over a minute for me to open this thread to the last page by clicking the page number from the Manual Machine Tools List.

If you are one of the people who have been following this, I apologise for the delay and I’ll update as soon as things become significantly less clunky..

Cheers all and stick with it.

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

When you are measuring for the purposes of comparison I don’t think it matters which units you use. If I am measuring something for DIY purposes I use whichever units give a simple value to remember. So sometimes an inch value is best and sometimes a millimetre value is best. When you are comparing points along the ways for parallelism it only matters which units are used if you want to machine them. For hand work where only small amounts of material will be removed between checks and you are checking as you go the actual units used are irrelevant as long as it suits your needs.

Martin C

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

You sound very much like me Martin, if I’m measuring a bit of wood I will always use the easiest.. 1350mm x 23 1/4 inches..!

Drives some folks mad 🙂

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

OK.. I’ve just spent the last hour and a bit doing an update.. pics, video clip etc etc…

Posted it and .. no … Access Forbidden.

 

Proper not happy.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

see here 

Also about images here

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Thanks Jason..

Ok.. 3rd go as it failed to submit on the last one too .. no idea why.

 

So.. Re checking the dovetail.. same process as above as I am only checking the ‘fixed’ dovetail side.

 

 

I was right.. phew – not going mad

 

I got the base up on it’s side – I love this overhead hoist jobbie, I would have had to cancel the whole job without it! – and set to step scraping. I did lots of measuring and re measuring attempting to limit how many times I needed to re visit this.

 

 

Once the numbers looked right then it was out with the straight edge to get the ‘flatness’ sorted to a decent print then set the base down and checked the print to the saddle dovetail and touched up any discrepancy there.

then 1 final measurement with everything looking good and I was quite hopful that it wouldn’t be far off –

 

Then re assemble the table and check..

 

 

(Hope that worked this time..)

I wish there were some emojis, the one that showed the utterly gobsmacked face!

 

As they say Oup North ‘That’ll do’  🙂

 

 

 

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Best I dismantle it again then and get cracking on the other dovetail to get that parallel.

This took a little more effort to get it to a decent print and parallel, don’t know why it just felt totally different to scrape, like it was a different metal. I know cast can be really funny stuff depending on it’s cooling when at the foundry but it was really weird.

Anyway, after lots of dressing the carbide scraper tip with a little diamond Easy-lap I got there in the end.

 

The measuring process for anyone wondering, gauge block to support the anvil’s position against the pin and the pins marked so they are always in the same orientation as they are only bits of ground silver steel bar.

 

 

And please remember folks, this is literally only a learning exercise for me to see if I can do it, I’m not planning a foray into high end aerospace or anything !

 

Once I got it pretty close I started work on the gib, so if needed I could alter the angle of the base dovetail as I was bringing it in as well as scraping the gib. When I got it close I measured the free play with the gib inserted to where the beginning of adjustment would be and got a shim to suit. 0.7mm bonded to the back of it, then carried on inserting and printing to get the angle and contact decent.

The Shim material was JCB shim packers they use to space the rubbing blocks on the extendable sticks and the backactor transverse slides.. they do several shapes and sizes and are much cheaper than trying to order proper shim stock. They are reasonably accurate (plenty accurate enough for gluing on – what’s the glue thickness?!).

 

Eventually everything was very close so I concentrated on finishing the base dovetail and getting that parallel.

Here’s the numbers on the right (thou this time…), only the relevant bits after the decimal obviously (small numbers are tenths of a thou).

 

 

A quick extra stoning knocked off the high spot that was the 7 and a remeasure made it a 5..

I’ll say it again.. Wow!!

Time to re assemble the table and check ease of movement with everything adjusted up snug..

Beautiful ! .. I’ll try and remember to get a short vid of everything moving and the amount of (negligible) free play..

A very very happy Taff indeed 🙂

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

A little more progress, been busy installing a flea bay Chinese diesel heater for the workshop (my xmas present!) .. yes, they are very cheap, but yes it warms the place up lovely!! Heater is in the lean to mower and pushbike shed and ducted in to the garage. Takes air form up high in the garage and blows it back in at 2 lower points. Needs a bit of tweaking but nearly there. Oh it’s lovely to be warm in there!

 

Anyway, im happy with the base & table but then realised that since fitting the liner for the quill in the head I hadn’t touched it let alone checking it for parallel to the vertical saddle. Assembled it all, put it on the surface plate and had a check.

At 100mm quill stick out there was 2 thou of drop so I re dressed the vertical saddle ways to suit and here is the result.

 

Not bad.. 🙂

Next was to address the backlash between the quill pinion and the quill so the head went back on a load of spacer blocks on the lathe saddle and I bored out the fixed bore for the pinion shaft.

 

That 6″ Kurt vice is great for adding a bit of mass!

I then made a couple of brass eccentric bushings, the larger will be held in a locked with 3 pan head screws and the smaller one is a press fit into the plate for the smaller end of the shaft (which s then slotted to allow some rotation).

The bottom smaller one is the first attempt.. I wanted a 2mm offset. so that is what I dialled in on the 4 jaw chuck in the lathe.. so for anyone else that is like me and not thinking very clearly at all that equates to a 4mm offset – the rest of you can stop chuckling now 🙂

It was a good job I had to remake them, while test fitting the shaft in the first lot there was blatantly something wrong.. it was almost impossible to adjust and almost impossible to rotate in all but 1 orientation.

Here is why..

I presume the parellel offset at the small dia end was due to flipping round in a chuck, and the bend from the heating of the gear area. So I chucked it over the gear area in the 4 jaw and after a fair amount of adjusting and tapping about turned the larger diameter. Then swapped ends, holding the freshly turned section in the jaws turned the small diameter true to the rest. Checked the run out and even over the gear there is at worst a thou so plenty good enough.

Re made the brass bushings, turned up a small thrust washer to rub against the small bushing (the pic will probably make sense) then fitted and tested.

More to follow…

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

So with all the messing about with the the pinion shaft the alignment with the fine feed gear was going to be out.

It was misaligned before I started this but now it was going to be worse so I fitted it all up, blued the teeth and gave it a whirl..

This pic shows where the worm gear was engaging with it and then after I turned the largest diameter on the quill pinion shorter allowing the gear collar to slide further onto the shaft and get decent alignment – red being the old and green being the new. Turns lovely and free now.

Next, the only retention of the pinion shaft was a little thumb screw and a a washer that rubbed on the quill return spring cover on the other side of the head so every time the quill was used the thumb screw would loosen and eventually fall out.

Unfortunately the only brass I had left was a large ish nut so I used that to make a top hat allowing the thumb screw (hence the flat spot!) to be fully tightened but still free to move. I’ll put a proper fixing there .. at some point!

 

Anyway, with great gratitude to Michael G I have a large enough piece of bronze to make a new X Nut. The current one is.. err .. well I think sloppy is the only clean way to describe it. I really cant see any ware and it is the same fit at any point on the X Screw so no ware in that but it is fairly useless.

So I turned 1 face flat in the lathe, then indicated off that in the lathe to get it true to the spindle of the lathe so I could face an end at 90 deg to the previously turned face. using that to then mark out for the hole position to cut the new thread.

Then chucking it up using 2 bits of tool steel with a little relief around the centre so once bored it wouldn’t squash I could bore and cut the new thread.

And the relief..

There was then lots of tooing and frowing between getting the larger turned face parallel to the spindle and the centre mark on centre.. you know, the ones that drive you nuts so time to get a brew then all goes OK..

Got there in the end.. just had to mark the mounting bolt hole positions then I think I’ refit the mill with the original nut so I can machine the new one to shape etc properly.. ish..

And that’s pretty much it for now..

Ready to test assemble and if all good get the resin for the column joint face, then fit the 1 shot oiler .. fix what ever else needs fixing… and hopefully that is it! Use the thing!!

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Hi All,

Not much of an update just wanted to say that for anyone still interested in this wee project I will be continuing in the very near future. Not had any time, been a rough couple of months.. Christmas was essentially cancelled, young daughter in hospital for best part of 2 weeks but getting some proper treatment now and my employment has been terminated on medical grounds – cant pass the medical to go to sea due to the wrist injury so game over.

Still trying to sort all that out but want to get some time (and peace!) in the workshop and get some stuff finished.

Will have some progress soon.. 👍🍻

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Looking forward to your updates as-and-when

With best wishes for better times ahead !

MichaelG.

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Good afternoon all..!

Been a while but as I said previously, been a rough few months.. on top of that, trying to navigate Department for Work and Pensions to get my stamp paid and a couple of quid to help with bills now I’m unemployed while I get my injury sorted so I can get back to work is .. well to say trying is something of an understatement.. You loose the will to live sometimes trying to get it sorted!

Never had to do anything like this before, worked and paid into the system all my life and they make it as difficult as possible to get anything at all when you need it.. hay ho, there are plenty worse off than me – but it’s nice to have a moan now and again!! 🙂

 

Anyway.. a little progress!

I left off after getting the new X-Nut roughed out (thanks again MG!) but going to assemble with the old one then I can use the mill to finish it so I started on the lubrication system.

I bought one of those cheap and cheerful 1 shot oilers a while ago of the bay and some 90 degree fittings to keep things tidy and less chance of catching them and snapping them off. So next task was drilling oil ways to the all the sliding surfaces, tapping them for the fittings and then getting some oil grooves milled into the saddle’s.

I used a 3mm drill bit to drill through to the dovetails and also to intercept that drilling to the ways so each oil point will provide some lube to a Way and Dovetail. That seemed to be the most common way I could find by searching the interweb and keeps it simple.

 

The fitting points –

 

The plan for the oil grooves –

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Next job .. Milling the Oil Grooves. A huge thankyou to Mr J up the road from me who has a lovely old Elliott mill and had the time to let me go and play with it 😁

Got everything there and set up.. n ER32 collet holder from Arc and a 3mm ball nose carbide end mill from the budget range at EW Equipment (No affiliation just got decent stuff from both companies) made very short work of all the grooves but even more surprising was didn’t break anything!!

 

The first set up –

 

The next –

 

So after several set ups we ended up with this..

 

 

More to follow.. 👍

 

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

I wasn’t sure how deep to go so Mr J and I just looked at how it was as we did the cuts on the first setup and decided that 30 thou (3/4 of a mil ) was plenty. Initially I was expecting to be cutting around 60 thou (1 1/2mm) but the result at 30 thou felt perfect. Plenty of room for the oil to flow and was easy to cut in a single pass.

 

So now for the manual bit of rolling all the edges over so they release the oil and not scrape it.

After trying a few things I just used my scraper to lightly scrape the edges then used some wet n dry paper to tidy it. Worked really well if a little rough looking really close up.

 

Then to the Gib’s and Dovetails – and here comes the ‘slightly less’ precision machining 😬

I just wanted a couple of small grooves to allow the oil to spread to the highest point of the sliding surface in either direction. Also to drill a pass through hole in each gib.

It’s going to be good enough .. I hope!

Oh the wonders of a small carbide burr in a dremel and a not so steady 1 handed grip on the thing 😟

A Gib –

 

And yet more to follow!

 

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Back to the oiler fittings. Drilled and tapped the nuts for some 90 deg fittings –

 

I then wanted to assemble the saddle and table to get a better idea of how to mount the oil distribution manifolds etc and also get a feel of how well everything sat together after all this messing about!

But.. the Y-Nut is only held in place by a single bolt and every time I tightened it it would begin to bind on the screw as it would rotate a fraction. 😠

The only way I ended up getting to grips with this was to remove the Column and hold / tweak the nut with a spanner from under the rear. After what seemed like 50 odd attempts I managed to get it tightened up properly without any binding on the screw. The adjustment ‘tweaks’ were so tiny it was literally a case of nip the bolt a little then tap the spanner.. and repeat.. and repeat.. Something of a design flaw I think, whether I do anything about it is doubtful as once it is assembled it shouldn’t need touching again.

 

Anyway, with everything together it was down to working out where to mount the Oil Distribution Manifolds. I wanted the table saddle manifold to be on the saddle then there would be only 1 pipe that was moving as the saddle moved in the Y but it’s not the easiest place to mount anything.

After a bit of head scratching, a chunk of aluminium, a hacksaw and a lot of very painful filing I eventually came up with these..

Oh for a milling machine to make something like that.. 🙄

But they go here –

So there are 5 outlets on this manifold, 2 each for the X & Y and 1 for the X-Nut. Perfect!

And here is mounted –

I’m going to use the little plastic P Clips to hold the pipework in place around the saddle which will hopefully keep everything tidy. I’ve also picked up some cheap check valves for the 4mm pipework from china (hope they work!) to hopefully will prevent the back flow of oil from the highest points to the lowest.

The I’ll mound the four outlet manifold somewhere at the rear to provide oil to the Column Saddle (x2 feeds), the Y nut, the Column Nut – or more likely the top of the screw and let gravity do the rest and that should be that.

I’ll probably mount the 4 block on the back of the column or somewhere like that.. out of the way.

Anyway.. only 1 more for now.

 

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

So with the table assembled I wanted to do a rough check how well everything sat together and how much play there would be in the table etc

I did a quick snug up on the gibs, everything still loose, moved everything round a bit then nipped them up a little more. I could have gone further as there was still no resistance change in the hand wheels but thought I would give is a check anyway..

Not bad at all I think, pushing and pulling as much as I could while holding the phone yet less than 0.1mm play and there is still a fair bit of adjustment to go!

I’m well happy with that.

One thing I have only just noticed.. I’m going to have to paint the thing before putting it all together I suppose. It would be a bit silly to do all this and leave it looking as rough as a badgers ar*e. I hate painting!

 

Well that is more than enough rambling for now.. I hope all are well and behaving yourselves!

All the best.. 🍻🍻

 

[LathejackParticipant @lathejack]

I’ve enjoyed following this project from the beginning. I am a big fan of Taiwanese and Chinese machinery and equipment, thats why I’ve got plenty of it, so it is interesting to see them being dismantled for a bit of fettling that might be required on some of them.

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Evening all..!

Yes, unfortunately I’m still here.. 🙂 Not much to report really, just been trying to get everything sorted with me, chasing hospitals etc which as I’m sure many folks will know is .. err .. well I don’t think that kind of language is permitted here!

I haven’t managed to get much done on the mill, thanks to the gantry hoist I’ve managed to shift some bits about, get them sanded and a small amount of filler to tidy the worst of the bad casting areas then primed and painted.

I don’t have any pics of the finish paint as yet, the gear head is painted back to its original (ish) cream colour and the rest of the machine is going standard sort of machine grey. I’m using that Rustoleum Hardhat gloss. It seems to be decent enough once I understood the coat thickness better, it is thinner than it seems so tends to run a little.

 

That is just the primer, I’ll get a pic if these 2 parts painted soon but I’ll only post a pic of the finished thing complete as there are more than enough video’s and pics around of people ‘refurbishing’ machine tools by painting them.

Thats about it at the mo, I’m hoping to be able to get a little more done soon but only being able to manage half an hour here and there 1 handed is proper slowing things up.

Anyway, hope all are well..!

Cheers.

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

Hi Taff nice to see you still working on the mill. It also looks like you are making progress. I forgot you were in Pembrook as I was there on holiday a couple of weeks ago visiting my nephew at Castlemartin and would have liked to have a look at your mill.

David

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Hi David, Castlemartin..! You could almost throw stones at me from there, I’m in a village very close by.

Next time, you would be very welcome for a brew 👍

 

The way it’s going I probably still won’t have finished it!

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Evening All..!

Been a while so just a little update of the trials of it all.

I am still messing about with it and unfortunately the painting seems to have caused more trouble than it’s worth 🙄

I got the gearhead and it’s saddle finished OK, then set to the column and that’s where the real ‘fun’ started.

Sanded, cleaned, fine filled all the scratches etc and finish sanded again.

So I primed it and stood back to admire the wonderful patterns that emerged!!

 

It made no difference whether the primer was on original old top coat, the old red primer or old filler the reaction seemed completely random as to where – some old top coat covered fine and other areas reacted like mad. Gutting.

So everything has now had to be taken right back, I did go to the effort of using some filler to make it smooth ish again (it’s a mill at the end of the day, not a swiss watch 😁) and start over. Same for the base and all the smaller bits although the base was even more of a challenge as once sanded right back the cast began to release old oil so several skims of Mipa N30 fine putty filler seemed to do the trick and seal it in.

So far so good, only the X/Y saddle to do now (I think!) then its reassembly time. Talk about loosing the will to live!!

 

Anyway, yes I’m still at it and WILL get there eventually!

Cheers 🍻

Taff

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Evenin’ All !

Finally … finished painting.

After having to re do the saddle because after leaving the grey bits to cure for almost 4 days I masked them with frog tape to put a bit of a ‘tough black’ paint on the unseen rough cast areas just for a bit of protection but when I peeled th frog tape off the glue had reacted with the grey so had to start over back to metal again there. At least it was a small area, fiddly but small.

Ok, 1 pic.. as there are thousands of pics of grey paint on the web.

 

Time to start putting stuff back together.

 

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

I thought I would start with reassembling the spindle / quill as there were a few ‘issues’ evident when I stripped it that I suitably ignored to deal with another time.

Starting at the bottom, the lower bearing cup (it only has a pair of taper bearings for anyone not familiar with these) needed no extraction, it fell out when I lifter the quill up.

Only option there is bearing retainer I think, it is a good fit just not quite tight enough to hold itself.

 

The upper race was so tight on the spindle shaft instead of a decent sliding fit to allow adjustment it took some serious effort to get it off, ended up modifying a puller to get fast to it properly and draw it off.

I checked the replacement bearing to make sure it wasn’t a dodgy bearing that was under sized but that was the same so I spun the spindle between centres in the lathe and using a very sharp HSS cutting point just rubbed the journal then polished it with some 800 carbide paper until the bearing would just about slide on. Its still very snug but it will move ok.

 

The spindle nut (a pretty slim thin thing) was so loose on the thread it could almost walk itself off the thread without turning. It also didn’t look right on the thread, looked to be on an angle.

I made up a collar to take the place of the bearing so I could check the alignment of the nut as the last thing I need with new bearings is lopsided contact with them.

Not ideal!!

So I set to making a new nut out of the only thing I had to size which was a large pipe bushing. I had previously done a quick check on the thread and it’s M30 x 1.3 – easy enough I thought until I came to make it and actually measured it. It is a 1.5mm pitch but in machining terms a country mile off the spec for an M30 x 1.5, almost 0.75mm over sized and the male thread on the spindle was under sized by around 0.25mm! Good job I didn’t just start. I started with the internal thread of the nut so I could use the spindle to check as I went as it was only ever going to fit this spindle.

Soon enough had a lovely snug fit – but screwing the spindle in felt a little off so I didn’t bother setting the indicator up to make sure it was going to run true and contact the bearings properly, I just looked at it (I could have stood in next doors garage and still seen it!).

Oh dear.

Fortunately there was still a small amount of meat in the threaded area compared to the splines that the nut has to pass over so I after finishing turning the nut I set it up between centres and once I got the cutting tool aligned I chased the thread down a couple of thou until the tool tip just began to leave a witness on the splines. It did some strange cutting, bit here then a bit there, nothing consistent until the last pass… Phew!!!

So now the new … new nut sits perfectly (still got the cut the notches for the spanner and locking tab)

A little more in a mo.. 🍻

[Author]

Posts