Member postings for mark smith 20

Ive used those diamond discs from Hong Kong , they are cheap and very good. I was using them on this contraption i put together to grind mother of pearl. But ive used them dry and wet on lathe bits carbide tips and allsorts of steels . They cut very fast and with light pressure never had the so called problem of steel dissolving the diamonds.

I had a water drip feed fixed to the back of it also put a tap on the bottom of the old aluminium pan. Controlled with a variable speed dc motor.

Edited By mark smith 20 on 02/11/2017 00:47:01

Edited By mark smith 20 on 02/11/2017 00:48:24

James is your deckel the 2 lever type or 4 lever (on the right hand side of the column when your facing the machine)

Pages 42-45 inclusive are missing from my copy of the deckel manual. I assume they are just further examples of tooling but cant say for sure.

John, i dont unfortunately have the pages 26-27 which are missing from my copy, on comparing with the alexander mill manual i have to assume they are concerning the dividing head attachment

Heres the alexander ones but i dont know if the readings/ settings are the same , they maybe as the OP  he said his machine was also imperial.

Edited By mark smith 20 on 01/11/2017 20:13:16

Murray , how easy are scale to shorten, i know magentic scales are easy but ive seen the odd cheap older readouts with scales , but obviously taken off full size industrial machines. Ive heard people say they are easy to shorten despite certain manufacturers saying they cant be shortened . I think the last cheap ones i saw was a newall spherosyn? Readout plus three scales ,( scale were far two big for a alexander mill) but all was less than £100.

and i believe they use some sort of steel balls in the scale and arent glass. Newall say they cant be shortened but after reading one or two forums some people were saying they tried it and they worked fine to all intents .

james for the manual ive just scanned it in ,in 4 files here . Never used dropbox before so hope it works.

**LINK**

**LINK**

**LINK**

**LINK**

james ,its a 2 hp ge washdown motor i got off ebay cheap(,brand new ex MOD) ,powered by a Toshiba inverter drive also off ebay new.

No handle not rechromed just polished. All the rust etc on the ways was removed by simply alot of scrubbing with those green dishwashing pads (which arent very abrasive) and whitespirit , Surprising how clean they come up when all the rust and dirt/grease is removed.

The bottom half was stripped and filled with zinc phosphate high build primer ,also any chipped and areas with paintloss further up as well . All after thoroughly degreasing everything after fully dismantling it. Where existing paint was in good condition i just degreased roughened surface and applied the high build primer .

This was all wet and dry sanded to as smooth a finish as i could get without being obsessive.

Then most was sprayed with a cheap spray gun and compressor using paragon machinery enamel.

Hi James , lovely machines in my opinion, i have an Alexander version from the 1950`s. I have both the Deckel and Alexander manuals . I see if i can find a copy on my hard drive of the deckel version.

I believe Alexander was the agent for Deckel up to wwII but during and after carried on making them under there own name with slight differences, No one took notice of patent law during the war with Germany.

Here mine before and after some restoration, i assume yours will be similar,with mt4 spindles and plain bronze bearings.

Theres a nice brochure here http://www.dialog5.com/fp1brochureapprox1934.htm

Edited By mark smith 20 on 01/11/2017 11:02:43

**LINK**

Looks like others have had similar problems with fine feed not working  with the same mill on here before. notice the same shaft with none of the linkages in the middle like the on the parts  diagram .

**LINK**

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 18:06:01

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 18:07:47

Hi Steve it may be but i dont think its sheared ,it certainly wont turn . The bits in the middle of the long bar are certainly not the same as mine despite being it the manual.Mines just a straight long bar with the worm possibly pinned on one end and the handwheel/dial on the other fixed on with a socket head grub screw..

Also i suspect that these mechanisms later were later changed somewhat as there are parts of the fine feed rod that appear on the parts diagram i got from a advertiser on here that certainly arent on mine such as the fine feed rod which on mine is just a plain rod but in the brochure it is different and more similar to the seig mini mill variation.Such as part 138 (adjustable union)

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 16:47:49

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 16:49:43

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 16:51:49

Murray,

All i know is that the damp has disappeared completely since it was removed last year, they are removing it from 100`s of properties in our area and thousands country wide. It was removed through the cavity wall insulation compensation scheme. I found out that it should never have been put in areas such as west coast of cumbria that gets loads of wind driven rain.

The cavity wall companies promoted by the big energy companies just put it in any house that said yes , they`re initial surveys of suitability were a joke. I think we were the only house on our road that refused to get it in.

I dont want to get into the argument of damp v condensation but yes most of it was caused by wind driven rain penetrating through the render ,outer brickwork and across the soaking wet cavity wall cotton wool stuff.

It took 2 whole days to remove it from the house, which was done free of charge but they never got the promised compensation for replastering etc.

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 15:41:34

I think the whole fine feed thing is a joke, i think the whole problem stems from a mixture of things starting with back lash on the rack and pinion on the main column. The fine feed when it does engage has to turn several times just to get the backlash out before it actually fine feeds in one direction and often the whole head drops around a mm or two and then you have to turn it multiple turns to get it back where you want it.

i`ll have to think what im going to do to fix it so it works a bit better.

When i look at the worm gear it probably is a mod 1 worm gear but without the hobbing just cut straight across. Also size seems to fit with the standard off the shelf versions but they have 30 teeth not the odd 29 teeth as this has.

Such as this **LINK**

the dimension seem about right apart from the tooth number.

I was thinking it was a helical gear but the angles are too shallow.

Andrew ,i have thought of buying a helical gear but the angles of the the teeth are usually steeper on the common off the shelf ones such as from HP Gears (17 degrees or something) ,this one looks like only around 3 degrees.

I could of just turn off the teeth part of the original and bored and glued on a rplacement bit.

Bazyle , i did wonder about that you mentioned , problem is the teeth should ideally engage alot more than they do even if the part wasnt worn and it causes a lot of slack and backlash which id rather not have on the fine feed.

Hi Andrew, yes the worm shaft and gear make very little contact , ive always had a problem of the fine feed suddenly tightening up then dropping too far. I just put it down to Chinese manufacture.

When i push the worm shaft teeth into the gear in my hands ,there is around a 1mm gap at the bottom which doesnt sound ideal.

The block at the handwheel end as a bit of wiggle room so that tightening the block pushed downwards has a tendency to push the gear end into the worm gear but not by much.Nothing is a tight remotely precision fit.

here a few more pictures .

The pitch of the gear is around 3mm as best as i can tell ,with 29 teeth and a outside diameter of 30.90mm.

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 12:32:32

Hi Andrew, the teeth are at an angle but only a few degrees. The worm shaft does only touch very slightly in the middle which is probably why they are such a pain to use and now it seems it is mangled in the middle and just totally slipping when turned as there is no contact.

I dont like the idea of buying another which will probably be just as bad after a few months of use.

I`ll take some measurements of the gear and teeth . The teeth maybe dont look too bad but if the worm shaft is only making contact at the very edge of the middle then its not really designed properly.

Thanks

If anyones interested one of the advertisers on here has them in stock at around £34 (with shipping and vat) , sounds a bit expensive to me compared to spares for the seig mills from arc.

The parts only 32mm diameter by 22mm long.Its not a proper worm gear either just probably a metric helical gear of some kind but i dont know anything about mod gears.

Does this sound expensive to anyone else??

Edited By mark smith 20 on 31/10/2017 10:34:39