Restoration and modifications to a Tom Senior light vertical mill

Nice job on the repair.

I have a Tom Senior Light vertical. I have had is for about 12 years, I cannot remember what the backlash was when I purchased it but I measured both the X and Y axis last week. I measured approx 0.6mm. This week I stripped the leadscrews and nuts from the machine an took them to Kingston Engineering Hull. They are going to clean up the leadscrew and make new nuts.

Ballpark figures for the new nuts. X nut £60. Y nut £150 as there is more machining required. Appox 3 weeks delivery.

Bump.

Anyone else done modifications to this model of which I have recently purchased. A lovely old machine. The No is K3400 with a 4 above the long number 4 ??? I have fitted a Mondeo wiper motor for the X Axis travel . It has a 3ph motor & inverter. A M DRO 3 axis kit. Anyone else done any other mods to one of these. I am just working on a chip evacuation system which I will post pictures of once done.

Steve.

Hi Steve,

Timely bump. Just about to start working on mine again.

Just received the No. 6 chuck removal wedge set which I ordered from the U.S. on Monday!

Any one have advice on using these to extract a very tight MT2 arbor?

Miles

Not used one of those. When I bought my mill, the chuck was very tight in. Managed to get out with the draw bar unscrewed 2 threads & a hefty blow. Since then not had a problem. I do not tighten the bar hard, Never slipped so far.

Steve.

Hold chuck and arbor horizintally with wedges lightly in place - tapered edges together, rest one wedge on something solid and tap the top wedge with a copper hammer and it should pop the chuck off the arbor, a third hand to catch the chuck helps.

I've already soaked mine in penetrating oil and hit the drawbar as hard as I feel comfortable doing. I was worried about damaging the bearings. Will try with the wedge set and a clamp.

Miles

Thanks Jason,

This is to remove a collet chuck from the machine. I could turn the head horizontally and support the wedge on a machine vice on the bed?

Miles

Yes there is room under the spindle base to get a wedge in there. It is not a big area . There is a posting about this on here. He used wedges successfully.

Steve.

Edited By Steviegtr on 07/05/2020 13:44:45

I found this thread: **LINK**

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=158617

Here it is.

Steve.

Thanks Steve

Tried heating up the chuck's collar with my soldering iron, in an attempt to free it. No luck with that.

Anyway, managed to extract the chuck with the wedges, using this setup:

Thanks again for the help.

Since I have had my machine I have always struggled with the 1/2hp motor easily stalling. Today I went at the inverter with an attempt to see what was wrong. It is a Toshiba .75kw one. These things have a 160 page manual. The way it kept hunting I was sure that a winding was down on the motor. The other thing was no matter how I set the upper Hz limit , it would never go above 52.5. Very deep into the manual there is a section on RS232 interface programming, which until now I have steered clear of.

So I slowly went through every parameter. It seems that this inverter which was 2nd hand when the previous owner fitted it, had been controlled by a interface.

The base motor frequency was set at 60hz instead of 50. Also there was a setting waiting for an input at 52.5hz. Settings for this are on or of by the selection of a simple 0 or 1. --- 1 being rs232 on. I changed this to 0. Came out of the program & saved the settings. Now the motor is great. Also i have set max to 85hz for now. Runs fantastic & the power is much higher than before.

Nothing wrong with buying 2nd hand electronics but you never know what they were previously used for so a good scan through works wonders.

Strangely a lot of forum members had been telling me that there was nothing wrong with the 1/2hp motor on these machines. To any of them who may read this, my sincere apologies you were correct.

Steve.

.

Edited By Steviegtr on 08/05/2020 00:22:45

For my part that's an excellent resolution of something that's been nagging for some time. So thank you Steve for the update, it's a good result. I was one of the ones saying there's summat oop, so I'm pleased on your behalf.

As for the object lesson in buying secondhand electronics of indeterminate history, I've got two Telemecanique Altivar drives here I bought on spec' both have been set up with the OEM software and then locked so almost all of the setup parameters are not available via the integral front panel. I tried downloading the software, but it killed my laptop.

Some things one just puts down to experience.

Good news, many thanks for letting us know.

Simon

Is there no parameter that unlocks the system. If not that a bumma.

Steve.

No progress on the Light Vertical itself but I need to use it to do some modifications to a Wadkin sawbench that I'm restoring.... I'd appreciate some feedback on this...

I have to cut a rebate into the edge of the saw's table. This is my plan to support the table on the mill, using the existing fixing system and two 50mm x 20mm bars. Does it look ok? I could put a jack where the ribbing reduces? The table weighs about 45kg......

Miles

Thats a lot of overhanging weight straining the knee, is there any way you could use a weight and pulley to assist the balance?

Thanks old mart. Counterbalancing with weight is a good idea. I'm not too happy working at the limit of longitudinal travel either. Jobs like this are a good case for having a head which rotates around the axis of the column....

Looks like it will be a day's preparation for 1/2 hour machining

Miles

It is always better to prepare carefully than to regret what you did later. When I made the R8 conversion for the museum's light vertical, I spent ten times as much time setting everything up to be perfect and better than my normal work. There was no second chance to get things exactly right and to my great relief, the results were even better than expected.

You could move the work between cuts, if the length of cut is too long. Careful re aligning should work fine.

When we had only the drill mill at the museum, I found that the slot in the bed which was used by the vice keys was not very good when the vices were used as a pair spaced out. The X movement is 500mm, and the bed is about 120mm longer, so getting the slot running true to the ways was not easy. The head had to be swung at about 40 degrees either way to mill the entire edge of the slot. Now the slot is within 0.001" of true which is an improvement on the 0.007" before. Before any cutting, the entire length was mapped and because the worst error was positive, most of the cutting was only 0.001" deep to clean up.