Tramming Tom Senior light vertical.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

I have had trouble getting the light vertical trammed and have just found an easier way to do it. The trouble lies in the clamps which allow rotating the head and also extending the throat depth. The whole lot rotates a little when the clamps are tightened, unfortunately not consistantly. Setting the marks in line gets you within 0.025" over a foot of bed width, and then if the pair of SHCS holding the head onto the shaft are slackened slightly, and the head knocked into tram, tightening them does not move the head to any extent. Tramming that way took 5 minutes, I was lucky that the bolt holes allowed about +- 1/2 degree of movement.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

[Brian WoodParticipant @brianwood45127]

Old Mart,

I have a favourite way of tramming vertical mills which allows you to keep the spindle vertical while you tighten the clamps. You might like to try it.

Mount a lathe faceplate on an adaptor which allows you to locate the combination into the Morse taper socket. Wind the quill down so that the plate makes contact with the table and with the clamps just gripping, apply pressure to the quill and nudge the head about until full face contact is made to the table. Keep the pressure on and tighten the clamps. Bingo

Regards Brian

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Some people use a large try square on the bed resting against a ground flat on the left side of the light vertical head. I had never thought of the faceplate method, that could also be used on mills with tilt adjustment also.

I did the tramm with the bed central for zero zero and then at each extreme of travel that the tramm width could accomodate and the ends of the bed were both plus 0.002". The drill mill which cannot be trammed is also 0 – 0 in the middle and 0.002" high at each end. I tried an 18" straight edge on the TS bed and there was no way a 0.001" feeler gauge would pass at any point.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

See my comments in This Thread about the tool I built, and also the link in my post to the one built by John Moore, Bogstandard, from where I drew the inspiration for my design.

For the one I made, I used an MT2 arbor, as that will fit both my mills directly, as well as the bench drill.
Note that the important part, is that the two feet are in a plane exactly perpendicular to the axis of the arbor, which I achieved by lightly skimming them with the arbor held in the Myford's spindle; The size of the gap bed was the limiting factor for the beam length.
The device then becomes self calibrating, by just standing it on a flat surface.

Seen here in use, the mill is about 18 thou out over the length of the gizmo

Alternative setup with the table/head now trammed

Bill

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Hi Old Mart. I think some are misreading this problem that is pretty unique to the Tom Senior.

I found to get it right i had to have the tram out a few thou. Trial & error & then nip the 2 bolts It took a while. No matter how much you secure the head it still moves when tightening the 2 single bolt clamps.

Pics to explain.

Steve.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

Posted by Steviegtr on 11/08/2022 22:32:19:

Hi Old Mart. I think some are misreading this problem that is pretty unique to the Tom Senior.

I found to get it right i had to have the tram out a few thou. Trial & error & then nip the 2 bolts It took a while. No matter how much you secure the head it still moves when tightening the 2 single bolt clamps.

I appreciate the problem as the Dore Westbury can be a bit of a pain, though the bolts are in a different place.
The reason I posted the photos of the tramming device, is that you can see what moves as you tighten things up.
Hence if you notice it always kicks, say 5 thou anticlockwise, you can set it up the same amount clockwise, and it might even out to zero as you nip up the bolts.

Bill

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

I started this thread specifically to address the problem tramming this particular model of mill which is well liked and nice to use. Over the years, there have been several improvements made by users to the tramming, mostly by controlling the rotation of the horizontal bar that supports the head. I haven't bothered as this was the first time the head had been shifted in two years. One thing I noticed was that if the head is rotated anticlockwise, it will foul the front locking nut unless it is also slid out about an inch when turning it. It could be fixed with a half nut at the front locking position if the rotation feature was used often.

Caps with two locking bolts would have solved this problem at the design stage.

Edited By old mart on 12/08/2022 14:32:57

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