Start of Tom Senior refurbishment.

The second picture in todays series shows another way of tramming the mill. There is a ground surface about 6" long on the left side of the head, and I put a lever dti on the bed and used the knee to run up and down it. The VFD set between 25 and 75 Hz results in a speed range using the pulleys of 174rpm to 2900 rpm. The view of the underside of the quill shows the oil seal which caused me so much hassle.

I have one of the 100mm Bison vises up on the bed with a new key for the 1/2" slots, I haven't checked the alignment yet, it may need a skim of the rear of the key.

The new rubber sheet to protect the rear of the X and Y axes is nearly complete and the polycarbonate guards are at an early stage.

I bought a set of the tee slot clamping nuts, studs, etc and wasn't happy with the looseness of the 3/8" tees in the slots. The nuts have been tapped out for 10mm helicoils, a metre of 10mm studding will be cut up and new tee nuts are being made for a better fit, in addition to the half dozen 10 mm ones we already had.

I have measured the X axis travel after adding the extra thread to the leadscrew and fitting two nuts for backlash reduction. It is 18 5/8" for the longer bed. The travel is not symmetrical, it moves two inches more to the right than to the left. I don't think there is any easy way of increasing the travel and am pleased that it is about the same as before the modifications. The next mod to the X axis will be a round 5" wheel at each end.

I have cut some metal on the mill at last.

The slots in the bed are 1/2" while the drill mill slots are 5/8". I used the DM to rough out a replacement key for one of the 100mm Bison vises. It had a run across the rear jaw of 0.0015" which is understandable. The pictures show how I got the vise dead on with the X axis, the amount of actual milling amounted to a skim of about 0.002" climb milling on the rear of the key.

Edited By old mart on 19/10/2019 19:09:19

Some more pics of the progress. I fitted the rubber swarf guard which Mike has made. It is a rather poor design which has to be moved up and down when the knee and Y axis are moved, there is really no alternative. The other one has the spindle speeds, please tilt your heads to view.

We pretty well finished putting a handle on the left end of the X axis leadscrew. The aluminium spacer needs to be cut a little shorter.