Non tilting; tilting head.....tilt

Thanks Mart, yeah really glad I got the bulk work done before the chaos of xmas.

HI, Shent.

I've been worried about tram on my VM32L for a little while (I have other posts on this, though not expressed as such).

The first inkling was when I used a coax indicator to find a centre, but the drill (or in one case a boring head) was clearly off-centre. I spent quite some time trying to think of a mechanism for this, before I realised that this could happen if the tram was (well) out and the coax indicator and cutter stick out from the spindle were significantly different.

I had a look at this last night and my use of a micron indicator turned out to be entirely optimistic with the error being of the order of 1.5mm over 200mm!

I took at the head at that point and the indicated angle is around 1 degree.

This surprised me because I was reasonably sure that I'd checked tram early on and ti seemed OK. Mind you see the recent posts on Cognitive Ability/Dysfunction...

Here's the thing. I've loosened the 3 bolts which lock the head and pulled out the lock and the thing will NOT shift. Makes me wonder how it moved after the hypothetical correct tram in the early days.

I think that the next thing to do is to loosen the central bolt but it looks pretty solid at the moment so more like a spanner and a tap with a dead hammer to move it.

Before I do that I wanted to ask if there is anything else I should look to on this, other than making sure that the head doesn't fall over in the process.

Also, thanks to Jason (I think) for posting links to useful manuals for this and related machines. The UK ones are pretty poor.

Not going to happen tonight by the way as I've started on the red wine and have a rule about powered or heavy machinery and alcohol...

Thanks

Iain

Hi Iain, unfortunately when the head is rotated the bolt will always fall into the top access point. This happened to me each time I rotated. The last time I put the head on though I tightened all of the other bolts up so I could just about move the thing, left the bolt that would normally slip into the channel loose and just guided it away from the slot as I rotated. I would suggest doing exactly this so tighten all the other bolts up tightish, slack pre the bolt closest to 12 o clock and see if you can bring it back into the rotation channel.....horrible explanation. Also make sure the pin on the side is pulled out otherwise you're not moving it anywhere.

HI, Shent.

I'm actually not looking to rotate the head (by more than 1 degree, anyway).

Not sure what you mean by the various bolts. There's a centre bolt and 3 at 120 degrees with one at the bottom. I've loosened the (3) outside bolts and can't move anything. I'm wondering if I need to unlock the centre bolt though Jason's manual doesn't say so.

Iain

Sorry Iain, read it wrong, short answer is yes, you need to undo the centre bolt, loosen a little then try rotating, loosen a little more if no movement and so on. Don't loosen it too much though as you'll put too much strain on the bolts.

Also make you pull the pin out on the side of the headstock as it wont move anywhere

My LUX mill has three bolts to rotate the head but no locating pin, just a scale.

I did look at the lux mill when I was shopping around, looked good but not sure if they are made by the same company as when I spoke with Weiss; they only mentioned Amadeal as their UK distributor.

Thanks, all.

I loosened things up and have got a reasonable tram. I had some challenges to start with with wandering values, but found that this was just the mount wasn't tight enough.

I can't quite believe it but I appear to have got the spindle square to with 0.01mm over a span of 220mm.

Some of the problems I raised about alignment in a previous post appear to be resolved. When I centre with my coaxial centre and then switch to a chuck, the drill is spot on the centre.

Iain