Member postings for Mike Poole

On the side of the column are two plugs for the oil for the bevel drive, the bottom one is for the level and the top one for filling with SAE 40 oil, there is also a oil point on th top of the quill, I think you will need to slide the head down the column to get access to this point.

Mike

Although it is in common use on hobby milling machines the morse taper was designed as a self holding taper for drilling. To use the MT for milling a drawbar will be required, but this is true for most vertical mill toolholders. The problems arise if the drawbar is tightened enthusiastically and then the MT can need a good whack to release which will not do the bearings in the head any favours. The R8 still requires a drawbar but releases easily and was designed by Bridgeport for milling. The ER collet chucks are widely available and are ideal for end mills, slotdrills and parallel shank drills and any parallel shank tooling or setting aids. If the nose to table distance is not generous R8 direct collets can win a bit of extra height. My personal choice on a Warco VMC was R8 and an ER chuck, I also have an R8 shank flycutter and an R8 shank boring head. This is not usable on my Myford lathe which is MT2 but I accepted that when I made my decision to go R8. The ER collets I use on both machines which is useful but I had to make or buy an ER chuck for the lathe.

Mike

Edited By Michael Poole on 20/01/2014 21:48:08

It would seem there is a market for these books in a digital format that is not satisfied by the publisher. I find the digital option for music, reading and viewing to be most useful. I buy my music on CD but rip it to mp3 so I can store it on my NAS drive and stream it to my SONOS speakers to listen in my house and put my current playlist on a USB stick to listen on the car stereo and a copy on a USB hard drive to listen at work and as a digital backup. My kindle has a substantial collection of books (both ones I have purchased and classics from Gutenberg) that I can pop in my bag and take on holiday so I can choose what to read at any time. Book and magazine publishers are only just getting their act together to provide this sort of flexibilty to the consumer. The titles mentioned are not available digitally at the moment which has clearly left a market for illegal copies. Publishers have the problem of copyright control once things are digitised but this does have solutions as MEW & ME have demonstrated with online and pocketmags. Just I can digitise a CD in a few minutes an office photocopier will scan a book to a PDF file in a few minutes if the book is dismantled, it wrecks the book but the pirates will soon get their money back.

Mike

Two images stick in my mind from the induction at the start of my apprenticeship in 1972. The first was dermatitis in the gentlemens area due to keeping oil soaked wipers in your overall pocket, and the second was a picture of a finger complete with tendons ripped out of the forearm laid on a drilling machine table, a dire warning of the danger of wearing gloves while operating a drilling machine. An effective shock tactic as I have avoided dermatitis and still have all my fingers.

Mike

The drive plate, clutch cone and main shaft are keyed together so are effectivly one part. The only part that can move is the push rod which as Dennis suggests has most likely screwed into the drive plate to the end of the thread and jammed. If enough torque cannot be applied to turn the push rod and it breaks then I think drilling the pushrod out will be the best solution, with care no other parts will be damaged and only a new pushrod required. Take precautions to control the sudden release of the rod and spring and make sure nobody is in the firing line.

Mike

Ekp supplies list pb balls for 95p and £1.20

Mike

Have you examined the cross sectional drawing in the myford manual? Copies are posted in various places on the internet. The drive plate is keyed to the end of the shaft, try to avoid damage to this, they are nearly £100. The two nuts trick is a common way to remove studs without damaging them. Simply get two nuts and thread them both onto the push rod and using two spanners turn them to lock against each other, they will then be tight on the stud and the stud can be turned to screw into the drive plate, leave clearance for the rod to screw into the drive plate.

Mike

Try locking two nuts together on the exposed thread with a gap to the driver plate, a nut can be borrowed from elsewhere on the machine, then screw the thread in to relieve the pressure. If this does not work something will have to be sacrificed. A nut could be welded on the end of the thread but this will likely render the rod unfit for further use, these are around £25 from myford. If the threaded rod is destroyed I think I would drill it out but this will result in the rod and spring firing out like a bullet, destroying the drive plate will cost about £17 the bronze plate is about £80. The main problem is to apply enough torque to the push rod to screw it back through the drive plate. If the assembly is off the machine try holding the thread in copper soft jaws in a vice then turn the pulley and clutch assembly by hand.

Mike

If you have not undone the screw yet the powerful spring is still to come and is most likely loading the clutch making the screw hard to move, be careful!

The spring may be coil bound which is why the assembly is tight now.

Mike

Edited By Michael Poole on 31/12/2013 12:06:48

The Allen screw adjustment grips the square part of the shank on a tap and the chuck part holds the tap true. It is more secure than simply holding a tap in a three jaw chuck especially with larger sizes but a bar can be screwed into mine to help resist rotation.

Mike

"snap" John

Edited By Michael Poole on 27/12/2013 16:30:22

I have been to the shop and bought another tool because I can't find the one I know I have somewhere, currently cannot find box of ER25 collets or the adapter plate for 3 jaw chuck to fit on rotary table. I think I probably have a mischevious elf rather than a fairy in my workshop (or I could just be disorganised).

Mike

Thankyou gentlemen for all your contributions, I will most likely use more than one solution as there are pros and cons for all of them, Michaels copy attachment could be very useful with suitable templates for large radius curves and other forms.

Mike

While I was typing, a solution like the one Jim has just posted came into my mind, it must be the power of suggestion at work. With the refinements Jim suggests this could well be the top answer for a leave it in place answer, it would only need to be removed for travelling steady fitment.

Mike

Thanks for the input gentlemen, it would seem that Johns solution of drilling the cross slide would be the most convenient on a regular requirement to use these small angles. The vertical slide solution that Andrew proposed is the one I shall use for the one off job I have in mind as it is a quick and dirty setup with no need to make anything. I will probably get round to making a sub base but as I find my Dickson tool post most useful and the sub base would negate its use this would only be fitted on demand. Looking at drilling the cross slide for Johns solution there is not much room to drill without being very close to a tee slot so although I could live with two neatly tapped holes if the tee slot broke this would annoy me forever like drilling holes in the table on a drilling machine or milling the table on the mill or drilling a machine vice.

Mike

Applying a bit of lateral thinking I think my vertical slide has some possibilities, swing it to a horizontal position and angle the base to give required facing angle, bit of a fiddle to set tool height but for a one off it's not too bad. Maybe the S7 slide conversion is the only practical solution.

Mike

Hi Al,

Even if I remove the swivel boss I can not find a position where two bolts can pick up a tee slot because the slot in the top slide base is wider than the cross slide.

Mike

The ML7 and ML7R topslide does not allow a greater than 65 deg rotation as standard. Is there a classic work around for this problem that I have missed, converting to the S7 assembly is an expensive solution.

Mike

Edited By Michael Poole on 08/12/2013 15:37:21

I think they are a high carbon steel, a quick touch on the grinder to perform a spark test should give an indication of what the material is. The non business end of a tap will do if losing the centre is not a problem.

Mike

Twist drills change from MT2 to MT3 at around 22mm. I imagine the torque to be transmitted is one of the reasons for the change. Large face cutters need lots of torque to drive them at capacity but a light cut should be fine and gives a nice clean finish rather than stepping over a small cutter and leaving tram lines on the job. We happily tackle jobs in the lathe that are really too big for the machine, with care it works maybe not at industrial material removal rates but it does the job. As long as you are cutting metal I think most people can judge when a machine is not happy with what we are asking of it.

Mike

I own a shardlow and like the fine adjusment engaged at the flick of a lever, I have used Chesterman also and both are good quality tools.

Mike