Dore Westbury milling capacity

I owned a mk1 DW and it gave me great service,like all machines you use it to it's capabilities,it will tell you if you are asking to much.Lifting the head and loosing position was my reason for changing to an sx3 ,I did fit a laser to assist in resetting the head which helped.The head height is great.For a light machine it has a lot going for it.

Frank

Hi

Many thanks for the latest threads on this. I have purchased the machine in question and made some small modifications and adjustments to it and it now cuts well with a good sharp cutter. Gib strips were slack, and the head had a tendency to swivel when making a heavier cut so I made a mod to the grub screws holding it in place.

The unit is mounted on a purpose made plinth with enough room to mount a small bottle jack beneath the column making it much easier and safer to raise and lower the column.

I liked the mention about Arnold's book so I will be getting a copy. I have found Harold Halls books absolutely brilliant and would highly recommend them. Good exercises to make useful tools and teaching working practices at the same time.

Bricky, would you mind telling us how you attached the laser to the machine you had and how it worked in practice? I'm sure others would benefit from it, even with more modern machines. Thanks in anticipation.

Chris

Based on the Mk2 Dore Westbury I feel the machine is similar in many ways to an X3 but less prone to vibration.

Depth of cut questions are bit bizarre really and can't be divorced from speed, feed and cutter size. At 650 RPM, a speed mine is mostly set at power levels aren't far from what the X3 has at the same speed. Given that they may well have an old large frame 1/2 hp motor on them they might actually be higher.

All a higher speed would do really is allow a faster feed. At 650 rpm I would have no hesitation using a 3/8 end mill at it's usual max depth which would generally be regarded as 3/8" and feed at a rate that suits the machine and leaves a reasonable finish. The biggest cut i have needed to take on mine is 1/16" for a depth of around 3/4" on the side of a 10mm cutter on cast iron. It didn't cause the machine any problems at all. It did it easily.

I have a 100mm 6 tip indexable face cutter to adapt too it. I expect to be able to get reasonable cut depths with it. As that will be run at 450 rpm more power will be available. It also uses raked tips which should help. They will drive a fly cutter of this size.

Part of my thoughts when I bought the machine were based on milling in a small lathe . 1/4hp motor, slotting 3/8 steel plate with a 3/8 cutter. It did it easily. Plenty of milling has been done with lower power motors using a vertical slide on lathes.

I must admit I am using sharp cutters. The person I bought it off wasn't even when demo'ing it. As is often the case on small machine tools the slides were way too loose.

John

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I replaced the angular contact spindle bearings on my Mk1 machine with taper rollers. It's a straight swap apart from the need to thin one of the lock nuts and make a new swarf shield from an old slitting saw:

Edited By Otley on 14/07/2016 11:38:53

Otley. Interested to read about your conversion. I can appreciated the theoretical benefits, but do you find that there is a noticeable performance improvement? If so, some further details would be appreciated.

Mike

Chris.

I attached a laser from a cheap level horizontal on the head and with a vertical line on the wall at right angles to the mill all one dose is when lifting or lowering the head just reset to the verticle line .You mentioned that you are using a bottle jack to lift the head,is your column smooth and dosen't have a screw thread as all of the DW, I have seen do.

Frank

Hi Frank

Thanks for this, I have an unused level laser which looks like it will be getting a new lease of life.......

The column is standard with the large screw thread but as the bottle jack takes the weight of the column it is easy to adjust it either up or down and then rotate the column nut to suit, then lock off the column clamps.

Chris

I did the same as Otley seemed an improvement.