Small horizontal mill – capabilities?

[ell81Participant @ell81]

I have recently purchased a pallas model c milling machine:

Not this exact one, but the same model:

So, I have a spare 1.5kw 3 phase motor I can use for it, or a 900W single.

My question is, what are these machines capable of? Ideally I would like to use it for making things from hard steel such as HSS, tool steet etc.

Basically parts for lathes and milling machines. Is that doable on these?

I have never owned a mill before so, any advice would be more than welcome. Cheers!

[Andrew CrowParticipant @andrewcrow91475]

I think that more information on your motors would be required before anyone would be able to recommend either or neither.

As for cutting hard steel, it would only be possible if the steel was in an annealed or heat treated machinable condition.

You may also need to be more specific on what you are trying to make.

Andy

[ell81]

On 26 April 2025 at 10:27 ell81 Said:

My question is, what are these machines capable of? Ideally I would like to use it for making things from hard steel such as HSS, tool steet etc.

The simple answer is not much. They were most likely intended for simple second operation use.

Small horizontals are very limited in power when using side and face horizontal milling cutters, or insert face mills, and tend not to have the speed range for carbide endmills.

If you want to machine HSS and tool steel it is the wrong machine, you really need a vertical mill with a much higher speed range. It is possible to mill HSS but need carbide cutters run at fairly high speeds so that the shear zone is red hot.

There was a thread on here some while ago (that I can’t find) discussing issues with a similar size mill. The conclusion was that one could run small slitting saws but not anything much bigger.

Julie

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

Agree with JA. I have a somewhat similar machine, a Zyto. Useful in a quite limited sense, I use mine almost exclusively with slitting saws. A 1/8″ wide saw in mild steel is about its realistic limit. Unless modified, problems will occur with the lowest speed being on the high side for horizontal milling cutters and the drive belts lacking torque capacity. A horizontal milling machine needs real rigidity and grunt.

I’m not really clear about what you need to make from hss etc. You say “parts for lathes and milling machines”, but aren’t these just the cutters themselves? A vertical mill is very much more generally useful in the amateur’s workshop.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

The type of tool that suits people who don’t like rice pudding and own a boat!

In industry they were good at their job however in the home workshop their use is very limited. As Julie says they were used for “2nd ops” that means an operation on a part after the main machining which in this case could have been cutting a small keyway, cutting slots for screwdrivers or possibly with two cutters ganged up would have put a pair of flats on the end of a tap spindle so the handle would not spin. Often used on non ferrous metals so did not need to be too sturdy. They would have been set up to do batches of these 2nd ops and may have only done a single one day in day out so could be worn in a particular spot.

You would probably be best to put it in a corner and save it as a future restoration project and find yourself something a bit more versatile, quicker to change tooling and with a bit more capacity.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Do I detect a lot of “badge engineering” going on?

That machine’s stand is clearly marked ‘Pallas’ but looks very like that for my Denbigh ‘H4’ so far partially restored. The very different colour suggests the stand and machine found each other in later life but are very happily compatible.

Is the mill itself embossed Pallas? (The Denbigh has its name and trademark embossed on both the stand door and on the body of the mill itself.)

The machine itself is nearly identical in appearance save that my Denbigh has its feed-screw under the table centre-line and the knee screw is operated by the more conventional right-angle drive on the knee itself, above the table.

However, Tony Griffith’s site does show the Denbigh ‘H’ series, of which the H4 was the largest and most versatile, was designed with second-operation and small-section machining in mind. It was made for line-shaft drive, as was that Pallas, using flat belts laced after threading through the frame; and running vertically above the mill.

The Pallas’ feed-screw looks like a previous owner’s addition. Some small horizontal mills, including the basic Denbighs, had lever-action feed because they were for light work only, typically batch-production tasks. The H4 though had self-acting feed (missing, or perhaps an option never fully fitted, on mine), but as we see only the left-hand side of this Pallas we don’t know it it was similarly provided.

 

One advantage of gang-milling as Jason describes, with a suitable spacer between two side-and-face cutters, is that when machining polygons on ends of spindles etc. it does not try to rotate the work. This is particularly important if th work is held vertically in a chuck with a screwed backplate, transferred from a lathe to some form of dividing attachment.

 

Provided you accept it is a small machine designed for light cuts at low speeds only, I see no reason why a small horizontal mill can’t still be a useful tool. A vertical mill is undeniably more versatile but there are operations for which the horizontal mill may be the more obvious choice, such as slotting, fluting, keyway- or spline- cutting and gear-cutting.

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Have a look at what you can get at what you can get on ebay to suit the arbor in 3″ or less diameter.

They will be HSS cutters.

If you can find collets to match the arbor taper (hopefully MT2) then you can use it as a stub miller with vertical milling cutters.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

It could have uses if you already have a mill with a vertical spindle, but very limited on it’s own. Take out the shaft from the spindle and find out whether it has a Morse taper which could hold an er 25 or 32 collet system. That would help.

[Julie AnnParticipant @julieann]

The mill looks remarkably like the Pallas H.O. mill shown on the lathes.co.uk website. The one major difference is that on the website the x-axis is lever feed. In the photo above the x-axis screw feed looks to be a bit of a bodge, for several reasons. I suspect it was added at a later date in an attempt to make the mill more useful outside of a production environment.

There may be some connection between Pallas and Denbigh as both were part of the Elliott group.

Julie

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