Guidance on turning in a vertical mill

[john swift 1Participant @johnswift1]

In a funny kind of way are you emulating  vertical lathes ?

 

I am watching this  thread with interest

 

at the moment I am still trying to get my head around how coil feed ESCOMATICS work 

 

[TerrydParticipant @terryd72465]

When will we see the YouTube videos we were promised?  As John Says it sounds like a vertical lathe, not quite like what you promised us.  I thought that it would be more like the link you posted here.

[TerrydParticipant @terryd72465]

Hi RKFlyer,

 

I was wondering if you had any more results to show of your turning on a milling machine.  It could make an interesting project.  A few photos or a YouTube video would be interesting

 

Seasons greetings

 

Terry

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I have considered the mill as a lathe approch as a way of turning large flywheels – very, slowly of course.

 

Neil

[Richard ParsonsParticipant @richardparsons61721]

 

The use of a milling machine to turn things is not as daft as it sounds. In one place I worked we had a 12 foot vertical lathe which was left over from the war (Kaiser Bill’s war). For some reason we could not scrap it.

One day a job turned up that needed a set of 10 foot dia things to be machined accurately. They were BIG and the problems of getting them loaded and unloaded were great, but the price was right so that was solved hydraulically. One of the centre lathe turners learned how to use it and away we went for the next 24 months at a rate of 1 off every 2 weeks . It was a transatlantic sub-contract job so eventually the ‘account-ants’ stuffed their oars in and the machine was sold to the prime contractors at scrap prices. They paid to have the building it was in demolished and the device shipped out.

The one difference between it and a mill was that the ‘headstock’ was where the milling table is. You could get round these problems but it would be cheaper to buy a nice centre lathe. One which really suits your future needs.

Edited By Richard Parsons on 26/12/2010 21:24:15

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Is this what you had in mind Stub ?

 

J

[Ramon WilsonParticipant @ramonwilson3]

Now that Jason is what you can call a setup. What originality.

 

A Cincinnati – ooh I wish

 

Regards – Ramon

[Francois MeunierParticipant @francoismeunier96697]

Hi,

But I did that, see the pictures in the album

I had no other way to turn a flywheel too large for my lathe. The flywheel casting was first routhened out by plain milling on the RT, and finished by “turning”.

I agree that it was for an one off job, but so funny…

Gedeon

 

PS : no way to insert here a direct link to an album?

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

I can’t see a problem with turning on a mill, it’s only a metal cutting exercise after all.

 

We milled on lathes before we had funds or space for milling machines, industry has live tooling that can drill, knurl and even rotary engrave on lathes, so what’s the problem.

 

Just because it doesn’t fit into someone OWN personal agenda doesn’t mean to say it won’t be idea for another person.

 

The OP said he didn’t have room for a lathe and wanted to use his mill.

now if he had said he didn’t have room for a mill and wanted to use his lathe I wonder how this thread would have gone.

We are only limited by our imagination, it’s just that some don’t have any.

 

BTW an Escomatic works by feeding stock, in coiled wire form thru a fixed collet chuck, i.e. non rotating and the work is done by the tools that rotate in tool carriers and the infeed is controlled by cams inside the tool carriers. the carriers can move in the Z axis, longways, but usually they just plunge in with form tools. Very fast once setup.

We bought 5 off Mecanno at Liverpool when they shipped over to France and they were used for long runs of small turned parts.

 

John S.

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

Hi Guys,

Some time ago I wanted to make a slitting saw arbour to fit my R8 mill. At the time I was fed up with the saws running out of true, so I thought I would machine the R8 arbour in the mill. My reasoning was that a lathe is something that turns the work , so that you can bring a tool into contact to cut it. So I put that arbour in the mill and a carbide tool in the vice and turned the arbour to size. Now was that milling or turning?

 

For those interested, the saw still appeared to run out of true, it seems you have to be very lucky to get a saw blade to have been sharpened  “properly”, even British ones, when they were made. That being said, it works perfectly it just sounds uneven when cutting. 

I don’t know for sure but my assumption is that if the saw is sharpened using the teeth as the reference, not its angular position, that one or more teeth could be slightly out. If I were to sharpen a saw I would either use a separate indexer or use the bottom of the gullet, not the tip of the tooth, for indexing. 

chriStephens

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

What’s a horizontal borer then ? Mill, lathe or borer.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Chris,

I used to have to sharpen a lot of slitting type saws when I worked in the piano industry. We had ridiculous tolerances to work to, holes to 1/2 a thou in wood and the biggest tolerance we had was on the cut up of parts with these saws which was plus or minus 2 thou, so a max of 4 thou in total.

 

Another problem was marking of the part with a high tooth on some of the painted parts, this would form in the shape of a scroll line on the side of the work as the saw retracted. If this was spotted by an inspector he’d stop the machine and shut it down until he decided the repairs were to standard.

 

Just sharpening a saw using tips or gullets would not cure this as it’s all dependant on individual tooth hight. We would mount the blade on an arbor with the blade flat on to the wheel and it would be spun so the OD would be concentric with the arbor and the tips taken off slightly.

Then every alternate tooth would be ground so that the wheel threw the burr off the side. The wheel was reversed and every other tooth was done the same.

This was done on the tops and face of each tooth to the required clearance angle.

 

It’s the only way to get a concentric blade.

I have watched blades being sharpened and all too often just the front face is addressed and if the amount removes isn’t the same then the OD goes egg shaped.

 

John S.

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

John, Thanks for that

That’s just as I suspected.

 A case of economy over quality?

chriStephens

[RJKflyerParticipant @rjkflyer]

OK folks, I will do my best to turn out my first ever YouTube video of my turning!

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Jason – I was thinking of something a bit bigger than that – not!

 

Neil

[RJKflyerParticipant @rjkflyer]

OK, here you go – my first ever attempt at creating and posting a video I know i said YouTube, but ended up on MobileMe…

 

http://gallery.me.com/richardjkelly#100000

 

It’s 12 mins – too long i appreciate, but will work on the brevity next time…! 

 

Feedback appreciated! 

Edited By RJKflyer on 28/12/2010 20:49:13

[Hugh GilhespieParticipant @hughgilhespie56163]

Hi Richard, Good video! As John S said, it’s just removing metal with cutting tools and any arrangement of work and tool that gives the required results is fine. In fact I can see that for some jobs it would be a lot easier to turn in the mill rather than the lathe.

 

Regards, Hugh

[david lockwoodParticipant @davidlockwood10028]

Very nice video, I am quite impressed by how easy it was to part off  presumably by the look of the piece of metal that you turned you have also done some knurling?  Where did you get the laser pointing tool? was it expensive?  It looked quite handy

regards David

 

[RJKflyerParticipant @rjkflyer]

Thanks David for your comments.

 

The knurling was already present on the piece of scrap i was using. I’d like to try knurling, but with a  non-CNC machine can see i’ll be restricted to knurling for the width only of the rollers. Also, I’d use a pinch roller not a single side roller.

 

The laser finder is from http://www.lasercenteredgefinder.com/ – they are available from Chronos too, but I ordered from US to get a 10mm vs. a 1/2″ shank. HAving said that, with 1mm ‘range’ collets either will clearly do.

 

There are two point (no pun intended…) to watch for:

1. Battery consumption – heavy. I see from their website that they now do mains powered ones! 

2. The size of the dot is surprisingly large, and you need to throttle it right back with the supplied polariser filter. My learning here is to do just that and then pop on my binocular viewer to get it spot on. So, is it ‘better’ than a mechanical edge finder: probably not, but with practice it’s at least AS accurate, it’s quicker and avoids the arithmetic.

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