Member postings for Dave Halford

The machine to which I will be refering to appeared on here as a Senior Mill but was in fact a Centec 2B. It was on Easylife Auctions. Well, I landed up with it - now I've got to get up and running ! It has an underdrive cabinet that has sadly been narrowed, taking off the lip and I will use it with coolant, so thats one job ! It has the orginal switch along with a dewhurst reverser that is needed (see later ) , a new 1Hp 4pole 1Ph motor that is currently mounted on the side, this will be rubber mounted in the cabinet. The bolts for the knee mount were missing, no problem ! The table looks new but is 17.75" X 5" not 25" as should be. The Y axis gib is missing but all ways look very good. It has very well made 3" swivelling machine vice, but the handle is missing. The arbor and it's support are missing, though the over arm I have. The pedestal, gear box etc all seem ok and in good condition. It's crowning glory is the Mk3 verticle quill feed head, with an autoloc type imperial collet holder Without a reverser the VH runs the wrong way !.

Now the questions ! what will make a good gib strip ? 3/16 or 1/4 silver steel strip suitably fashioned to fit ? Did the 2B have a bearing or bush in the arbor support ? Are the supports available ? Can a 2MT arbour suitable for this machine be bought ? I see that ARC do a stub arbor that would work near the gearbox. The motor has a 2.25" dia double pulley - the gearbox has a 5.125" double pulley this seems wrong, i would think they should be the same , or close ie 5"ish. Gear speed 6 seems to be 1:1 = 1400rpm, The current belt ratio is 1:0.45 = would only give 650rpm.

I have an INT30 arbour that could be shortened, and married to a 2MT soft arbor, I also have the matching support that could be altered to fit I think ! Is there anything special about the drawbars, or will 3/8" BSW or UNC threaded rod do ? Needless to say guards will have to be made.

I have Tony Griffiths manual with a good exploded diagram but sadly no key to parts. This shows an INT 30 arbour and gearbox shaft !

Answers,advice or comment on the above will be greatly appreciated, I'm new to milling ! Noel.

Hmm. I've helped my neighbour out with his model railway and learned a bit about controllers and Arduino boards. That's about it. I doubt they'd want to hear about my likes with fashion or my fashion portfolio I've kept as a hobby.

I don't mind doing a bit of volunteer work at an engineering firm over the summer even if it's just to get a taster. I won't try taking the car apart 😳😂 I'd break it or cause a car crash.

+1

Nick

I suspect that if you put 100kg on it you would have a hard job to move it over a rough surface and as for having deeply treaded tyres ,what makes the difference none of the wheels are drivers. Instead of a rubbish sales pitch it would have been better to attend English lessons.

Does anyone know if I could get away with running a sand blasting cabinet on a 9 cfm 50 litre compressor?

A tiny differential, but if the parts are serviceable - and only if - a more permanent fitting of arbor to chuck could be achieved by shrink fitting.

I very quickly learned that cool and warm parts can cuse difficulty when removing arbors from my mills - so I am always careful to make sure the ‘fresh’ arbor is as warm as the quill, when changing tools.

The drill is a startrite Mk2 and I have owned this, drill bought from a factory,Frank for 30+ years and never had a problem until now.I don't know what the quill taper is but the chuck is original.I don't take a a ball pein hammer to it but a dead blow hammer to just tap it back up.

Frank

Hi what mill is it as some mill's use grease on some parts like a Bridgport uses a white grease for varidrive bitts.

David

Your machine looks identical to mine except that the 'badges' are different. You even have the same vise. I am pleased I am not alone in experiencing excellent performance and longevity from this cheap 'junk' which so many seem to want condemn simply because, it seems to me, it is made in countries and by people who they simply cannot accept have advanced so far ahead of their own in technology, efficiency and industrial production.

Edited By Chris Crew on 15/05/2022 10:40:18

On assembly I first wanted to check that the table ran parallel. As in when you wind the table in the X and Y axis. We can ignore the column as I will tram that later.

Issue is I find that over my full range I see 0.2mm increase over 580mm of travel. In fact for the first 250mm of travel its only increased by 0.01, then from 300 mm it increases exponentially. See first picture.

The Y axis has 0.03mm increase over 200mm (I think this is acceptable?)

If I lean on the table at one end fully extended I get about 0.04mm movement.

So questions;

1. Is the X axis acceptable for a home hobby work
2. Is Y axis ok
3. Is there any adjustment that can be made?

I did stumble across an article in MEW 68 October 2000 page 30 "The Vertical Mill as a surface grinder" by David Machin where he has a table that shows .003" (0.076mm) which to him was very disappointing. But table looks to be half my size.

I might have a go at reproducing what he did to flatten my mill but perhaps that might be out of my league.

Thoughts comment welcome, pictures in next post below.

I had better change my name then.