Member postings for Ian McVickers

I have one of the RF45 clones and its ok but not brilliant. In my opinion the geared head is what causes the problems. After being stripped down and having the cheap bearings replaced and a few simple repairs done to the gearbox it now runs better than it did when new but I don't think I would go for a fully geared head again.

Been looking at bridgeports and have decided that's its going to be a major hassle getting one in to my workshop so back at looking at horizontal machine with a vertical head. Now I have seen a Bridgeport M head which could be fitted to a 1ES or similar with a bit of work on an adapter plate but it has a 2MT spindle which mean changing tooling but does anyone have experience with 2MT for milling? I realise that the cutter diameter is limited to 1/2" but I think the only tool I use with a bigger shank was a home made fly cutter so will it really be a problem? Just looking for some opinions/ideas here.

Thanks guys. Jason good idea on being able to unravel the strands. I will get some on order.

Hi all,

what is the recommendation for gland packing, ptfe or graphite cord?

Tried to log in this morning and it doesn't accept my user name, email or password. Tried to re-register and it says my email doesn't accept incoming mail.

Thanks Phil. Going by the photos and the info I could get on the web there is only 300mm max vertical height. So I suppose by the time a vice is fitted, boring head and part there wont be much left. All of my tooling is R8 as well so Ive been pricing up replacements and its getting expensive plus the work to sort out the electrics on the mill itself and a new dro. Might have to rethink this one and look for something different with a R8 spindle.

Hi all,

I am thinking about replceing my Warco GH universal with a AEW Viceroy mill with a vertical head. Trying to decide if I can do without having a quill feed... but I was wondering how quiet these machine run if anyone has experience of them?

Regards

Ian

Daniel,

third attempt at posting this. This site isn't really tablet friendly from what I can see. Hitting delete sometimes takes me back a page and deletes the post rather than deleting the text, but here we go again.

I am trying the Horizontal mill engine also by Stewart. Many thanks to him for making these drawings available. I wasn't happy with the result of my slide bars so decided to make them differently hoping that it will be easier for my first engine build.

Photo above shows my progress so far including the slide bars I wasn't happy with. Hopefully I will get some more time in the workshop this weekend but I have some shelves to finish first for storing off cuts.

Great start Daniel.

My first mill engine attempt is under way as well but after a hiccup I've decided to change the design a bit to make the first one a bit easier, well for me at least. What engine are you building?

Ian

I've been getting messages left on my mobile by a company called Lowells. UK debt collections mob. Net is full of complaints about them. They leave messages with a made up name, ref no and says they need to speak to you urgently, yeah right. I thought I had blocked all of their numbers but got a text yesterday with the same crap from them. Another number blocked now. If you get any calls from these people block their numbers and don't give them any info.

3 phase with vfd would be the preferred choice

My first metal lathe was a myford and I wasn't impressed by it. As others have said they do have a die hard following and can be expensive for what you get. I now have a Colchester bantam which I find to be a far more capable machine. Mine was around £1600 delivered and in good condition. I did rebuild the screwcutting gearbox which cost around £90 I think just because it was very noisy. Total cost still well inside what a myford could cost you.

Jason, did you ever publish drawings for that engine?

We will be in FW 1st week in April. No train this time but a trip up the mountain is planned. I hope you enjoy it Martin.

We've done the train trip a couple of times and it's fun. The only complaint is that you don't have a lot of time in Mallaig, about 2 hours I think if you travel back on the next return. But it's long enough to grab a snack and cuppa in the Tea Garden Café. No affiliation to it just happy customers.

Decided that I needed a more robust fly cutter so dug out a bit of round bar and got to work. Ended up with a decent looking fly cutter which fits into a 19mm collet. The cross bar is 25mm diameter and drilled to accept a 12mm Hss bar. Now I need to learn to grind the Hss bit correctly and get some test cuts done.

Is that an old Bill switchfuse isolator? If so be careful with it as it will probably have asbestos flash pads.

Chris, what are you intending to do with the stepper motor? This will have an impact on what type of control you need.

Managed to get a short time in the shop tonight and had another go. Cleaned the part down again and gave it a rub with scotchbright and cleaned again with isopropanol. Dropped several drops of Ali black into the spots with a small syringe and left for 4 to 5 minutes then washed down with water.

The results are far more promising.

Didn't see any marks on the cut edge on any of the machines I built using stepper motors. As John says when cutting material the motors will be stepping fast enough that it will be near continuous motion. There are various bits of hardware and software out there for control side. A lot of people go for Mach3 but personally I didn't get along with it. I did try Eding cnc and liked it but was part way through my next build which would have been using Acorn but decided to scrap the build and have a go at model engines instead.