How to anchor this milling machine?

[Sonic EscapeParticipant @sonicescape38234]

I have a tall milling machine, relative to it’s base area, and I don’t feel very safe standing next to it. It has also a large table (not shown here) and I’m not sure where is the center of mass. I can’t drill into the floor to use the existing 4 holes on the corner of the base. I’m thinking maybe to weld some extension on the bottom? But from what I understood cast iron is difficult to weld, I don’t think it would be safe.

I could pour a steel reinforced concrete slab 30cm larger than the base in all directions, and add 4 large threaded bars into it. But also I don’t want to add too much weight in a single point in the garage. The machine already weights ~1.5t.  Any better suggestions are welcomed!

 

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

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

[Anonymous]

The issue is not one of anchoring per se, but of tipping. Any tipping is most likely to be due to table overhang. I’d just bolt a couple of lengths (4 to 5ft) of hot rolled channel underneath using the existing holes and aligned parallel to the table.

On my Bridgeport I’ve never got around to bolting it down and so far so good, even with the table at the extremes of its travel, or when rotating the ram to swap from milling head to slotting head. Having said that in the longer term I probably will get round to bolting the Bridgeport down to the concrete floor just be safe.

Andrew

 

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

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

[VicParticipant @vic]

If it’s just tipping you’re concerned about, how about fixing some steel cables to the mill secured to the wall? If you can find a couple of suitable anchor points high up on the mill I can’t see it tipping.

[Hopper]

 

On Hopper Said:

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

I printed them here. A B1 format print on self adhesive vinyl cost ~5 euro. The high resolution images are from Adobe stock. It has a 30 days free trial period during which you can download up to 10 pictures. It is much cheaper than buying the posters already printed.

 

On Vic Said:

If it’s just tipping you’re concerned about, how about fixing some steel cables to the mill secured to the wall? If you can find a couple of suitable anchor points high up on the mill I can’t see it tipping.

The wall is made from a type of bricks with large holes. Is not the ideal anchoring material. Also it would be inconvenient, and it could still tilt in other directions. Still, I considered using a single cable from the celling. There is a concrete beam above the mill. But it would look very ugly.

 

How about if I use 4 plates on every corner. I could weld a threaded rod to each plate. And the rod will go into each hole. A 10mm thick plate would be enough? The only thing I don’t like is that the rod to plate welding should be very good. Not my specialty.

 

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Quick sketch of my scheme. Not joint positions so each tipping direction has one un-jointed lenth of tube across base of mill.

Robert.

[Sonic Escape]

On 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

 

 

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Thanks for the poster tip. Heroic stuff. I was in Vietnam earlier this year and the Soviet influence is still very visible there with similar giant monument statues out in the countryside of heroic soldiers and workers doing heroic work.

I might try your free printing trick on something I have wanted for my workshop for a long time, one of Diego Rivera’s giant Detroit Industry murals. He was a Mexican communist/socialist painter working for the American industrialists so similar sort of heroic worker motifs but Mr Rockefeller disagreed with one so much he had it painted over!

His car factory mural: The stamping presses look like Aztec gods.

 

[Robert Atkinson 2]

On Robert Atkinson 2 Said:

Quick sketch of my scheme. Not joint positions so each tipping direction has one un-jointed lenth of tube across base of mill.

 

Robert.

Yes, that would work. It’s just that I was thinking of some plates instead of tubes because they are not that tall and there are less chances of stumbling into them.

 

On Andrew Johnston Said:

On 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

 

 

I’m afraid also that the mill will tip in front. This is the other identical mill I have. With a heavy item on the table and the Y axis all the way over the table I would not be too relaxed in front of it. Otherwise indeed it would be a simpler solution.

Here you can see how much the center of mass is in front of the machine. Those 4 slings were of equal length.

 

On Hopper Said:

Thanks for the poster tip. Heroic stuff. I was in Vietnam earlier this year and the Soviet influence is still very visible there with similar giant monument statues out in the countryside of heroic soldiers and workers doing heroic work.

I might try your free printing trick on something I have wanted for my workshop for a long time, one of Diego Rivera’s giant Detroit Industry murals. He was a Mexican communist/socialist painter working for the American industrialists so similar sort of heroic worker motifs but Mr Rockefeller disagreed with one so much he had it painted over!

His car factory mural: The stamping presses look like Aztec gods.

 

I know the story of Rivera’s murals. I don’t know what was Rockefeller expecting when he hired him. He and Frida were good friends with Trotsky 🙂 Also the “Man, controller of the Universe” is nice.

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

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

My little Lux mill sits on a box tube stand, bolted to it while the stand is bolted to the floor, and a  u shaped strap, 25×6 fixes it to the wall at the top, so, it,s not going anywhere..

Why can you not fix it to the floor ??

[larry phelan 1]

On 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 !

My little Lux mill sits on a box tube stand, bolted to it while the stand is bolted to the floor, and a  u shaped strap, 25×6 fixes it to the wall at the top, so, it,s not going anywhere..

Why can you not fix it to the floor ??

Floor heating …

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

If I was in your situation regarding floor and wall, I would do two things:

1-Consult with 2nd hand dealers of such large heavy machinery, they shuffle them around on a daily basis and may have valuable experience regarding your mill type & tipping.
-How easily does it tip as is -?
-How large must a base be to prevent tipping-?

2- I like your idea of 4x blocks of thick heavy plate, not weld but drilled and tapped & glued rods to fit the base of the mill. I would just fit a full square base of determined size beneath it, and deal with it not to rock in any way, depending if you want to move it around or not, if not moving around a filling material can be fond and wait to settle before use(Weeks-?).

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

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.

[Pete RimmerParticipant @peterimmer30576]

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.

[Pete Rimmer]

On 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.

 

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

I had a Thiel 158 which is one of the very similar clones and put some very, very heavy lumps on the table, and despite never bolting the machine down it never felt any concerns it would fall over. Mine had the large plain table so the weight was pretty far forward, I agree with Pete above. When moving the machine down a very long garden when purchased it never felt top heavy or liable to fall over.

[larry phelan 1]

On 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! 😆

 

[VicParticipant @vic]

Given the objections so far I think the most elegant solution would be to buy some thick steel plate of a suitable size to form a more stable base and fix this to the mill with large countersunk screws. Having said that can you buy M12+ countersunk screws?

[Anonymous]

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

[SillyOldDuffer]

I’m afraid I worried for nothing. I put some 70kg on the other similar mill that stays outside. Then I moved the head in front all the way. I brought also the crane just in case. The machine is rock solid. No matter how hard I push it.

I went back to the garage and I realized why that mill doesn’t feel so stable. It sits on a lot of wood, while the one from outside is on a harder surface. It has also some round plates on every corner that I’m going to put to the one inside. But the harder surface matters most. So … problem solved.

On 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 … 🙂

[Sonic Escape]

On Sonic Escape Said:

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

 

 

On 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

[Author]

Posts