New Mill - Starter Tooling

Many varied uses for them eg

-if you want to mill a square or hex onto a bit of round stock you just slip it into the ER block and then hold in your vice to mill one face, rotate block in vice then mill the next face and so on until you have a square or hex.

- several eccentrics to turn? hold the block in the 4-jaw and set the first one to run true then you can swap the next one into position and will have exactly the same offset

- thin bit of tube you want to hold in the lathe but 3-jaw would crush it, not so if held in the ER block and then hold that in the chuck

- etc

The idea is that work can be held in the flavour of collet you use and the block allows squares or hexagons to be milled with the block in a machine vice without the need for, or pain of setting up, a dividing head. I've got a couple of 5C ones. I have used them, but the problem I find is getting the collet to grip tightly enough. Probably down to my gungho run the cutter at its limit attitude.

Andrew

Thanks guys, quite useful then, I will remember those for the future.

I did say that the forum member I am buying the mill from is a nice guy, he told me he would make a box to ship the mill to me but I didnt expect this, he made a timber packing crate with a pallet base. I think it stands a good chance of arriving safe and sound !

Edited By Ron Laden on 12/10/2018 14:22:39

Edited By Ron Laden on 12/10/2018 14:30:24

Edited By Ron Laden on 12/10/2018 14:31:26

Yet another question...sorry guys.

The mill arrives Tuesday and it has a clamping set, I have 6mm and 10mm end mills plus finger collets on the way just to get me started.

I am trying to decide on a vice and looking at the ARC catalogue (budget range) there are two options I am looking at. There is a 100mm swivel vice for £52 and a 100mm tilting (non swivel) for £80. The mill has 285mm spindle to table so I was considering the vice height, dont want anything too tall. The swivel vice is 110mm high and 83mm with swivel base removed, the tilting vice is 75mm high so quite shallow with no tilt.

I was wondering in practice and general milling what am I likely to find more useful the swivel or the tilt..?

Ron

Edited By Ron Laden on 13/10/2018 08:49:44

I would say the 100mm swivel is a bit big, better with the 80mm and use that without the swivel base which will reduce the height. If you can find a few more quid then the 80mm universal will be in the same size range and be less likely to suffer jaw lift.

I have only used the swivel a couple of times on my vice and managed to mount angled work in other ways so not needed a tilt vice.

Thanks Jason, I cant find the 80mm universal, only a 70mm precision universal which is swivel and tilt at £315..?

Ron

Sorry its the "versatile" not universal as I called it.

Found it Jason its 100mm, 95mm high and £95, I can run to that for a good vice.

Thanks

In principle they shoudl grip as well as any other ER collet holder. Use a ball bearing nut and tighten them up in the bench vice.

Neil

Ron follow the link I posted not the SG iron one, 80mm wide and 75mm high when off the swivel and £61.20. This is the same vice that was in the starter set you were looking at when you started this thread.

Ron,

I use this Soba vice on my mini mill which is smaller than yours with only about 260mm of fresh air between spindle and table. The vice is only about 65mm tall to top of jaws and the jaws are 100mm wide. It has served me very well over the years, no appreciable jaw lift . Not clocked it lately in the vertical plane but I seem to remember it was within a thou or two over about 4" (6" parallel held vertically in the jaws). It holds firm. Wasn't big money when I bought it from Chronos but that would be 15 years ago probably, no idea if they still do them.

On another tack I also use an MT2 ER25 collet chuck in the spindle which I have also been very pleased with. I tend to do work on this machine that is far too big for it having done all the milling and boring for a 6" scale traction engine water pump and the main bearing housings, including the steel plate jig for machining the latter. There are pictures for that on Traction Talk forum. Sorry about the state of the shed but it's only about 6' square so space is very tight and stuff tends to get piled around the machine!!

All the best,

Paul.

Thanks Jason, great, and the price is good too.

Thanks Paul, I intend to get myself a R8 ER25 collet set in the future. I am pleased to learn that it is not just me having to get by in a small workshop, mine is tiny a 6ft x 4ft shed so its cosy to say the least but I manage. I have a mini-lathe at one end and come next week there will be a mill at the other. The mill will sit where the bench drill did, that will now live under the bench as does my bandsaw and bench grinder, not a problem actually as they get pulled out when needed. Its a good job we dont suffer the fear of small places...lol

I've got a Warco 80mm swivel base vice and , to be honest, the base only uses up about 20mm of headroom.

Neil

Once I receive the mill I will check the gibs and the backlash and adjust if necessary, hopefully it will be ok.

I,ve watched a few videos on how to carry out the tramming of the table to spindle. One video I watched on a Chinese mini mill showed a 12 thou run out across 12 inches (6 inches either side of the spindle) in the X whilst it was 2 thou front to back in the Y. I,m hoping mine will be better than that, it would seem that the most popular method of correcting any problem is to shim the column to the base. I was thinking about that and though it will correct the run out, surely you lose the full face contact between the column and the base casting as the face of the column is bridged across the shims. Wouldnt that be losing some rigidity or am I wrong..?

Edited By Ron Laden on 14/10/2018 11:00:53

I can vouch for those Arc vices, I've had mine a couple of years now and very pleased with it too. I first baulked at buying it because it seemed too cheep, not quite up to Kurt standards but for the home workshop a great vice.

First thing I did with it was to remove the swivel base which gives a bit of weight to the stand and gave the machine a bit more headroom under the quill.

Phil.

Thanks Philip, thats good news as I have just ordered one

Ron

I've had a bit of feeler gauge under one side of my mill coloumn, does not seem to have hampered me.

Having scraped the mounting bracket for my X2, I would recommend shims...

Neil