Restoring Beaver VBRP Mill

Funnily enough I looked at that website last night, but bamboozled myself, will have another read. Am pleased you think it's the gear that is incorrect. I've never had cause to make any gears, but after looking at countless youtube videos I think I'd rather tackle the gear than the shaft/worm.

Thanks for your help BTW, as I'm in uncharted territory here.

The full PDF which lines up terminology in previous chapters can be found here after a quick google. It's well worth going through the whole thing just out of interest!

**LINK**

Not sure if it helps but here are pics of my gear, seems to show that the gears on mine are bevelled not straight cut like yours! (probably the wrong terminology but you can see what I mean)

No idea where the spindle is so couldn't take a photo of that

Cheers,

Paul.

That's really useful Paul, and looks like i would have expected the gear to, with the concave tooth form. I wonder if you could find time to measure the diameter for me ?

Had a closer look at mine today and did some measuring up, had the gear stood on end and it suddenly struck me that even ignoring the tooth form etc....the bloody gear is cut the wrong hand !

This picture shows how it would sit when in situ.....

The only thing i had to try and measure the angle of the worm and gear teeth was a 2 ft rule with a line of chords on it........not exactly precision, but after measuring both parts a few times i was getting consistent results, worm is 3 degrees and gear is 4 degreesI just need to try and work out what form the worm is, and either have a go myself or get a new gear made.

Did have some more progress today, moved lots of stuff around in my little corner, to try and make the area more workable, and also drilled and tapped the side of the mill to hold a nut and clamp set that i bought ages ago on ebay.

I never thought to question the size, and when it arrived realised the studs and T nuts were about 3 sizes too big for my old mill Fits this one perfectly though, so must have been fate

Also discovered my rotary phase converter has dropped a phase, so currently poking about inside to find the problem..

I have uploaded a RAR file of Oil conversions for the Beaver:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjl9chc90iw4l1o/oil.rar?dl=0

it has an old v's new conversion sheet and PDF's on all the oils it needs.

Dan

Hi Alan,

sorry its taken so long to respond but here are some more photos of the gear. It looks to me like it is bang on 6 inches diameter. I'm afraid I didn't have time to count the teeh but hopefully the photos are good enough that you can do that from enlarging them

Cheers,

Paul.

Edited By Paul Major on 18/10/2016 13:38:37

Thats great info Paul, thanks for your time, much appreciated.

Just looking at buying a beaver 5 mill off eBay the one in Aberdeen Inverurie's how tall are they, & what do they waigh & do you know the hp of each motor, I will need an inverter , the table as a lot of damage will that affect the X y accurey, please help I know nothing about them,regards rob

Hi Rob,

My MkII is a weighty beast at 1.5 tonnes. I built a frame with anti-vibration feet that it sits on which I move around with a pallet truck.

The beaver 5 looks to be a similar height and that is taller than the average garage hight and the motor on my MKII is 5KW 220v 3phase so take that into consideration when you are looking to buy a phase converter. You can get them on ebay for about £200.

The bed sounds troubling as if it is as damaged as you say to has been abused. if its just drilled then so be it but some i have seen have cracked t-slots where clamps of the wrong size have been used or undue force has been applied to rip a t-nut out. Not sure if this would have an effect on the level of the bed.

just a suggestion but pay cash on collection and take a measuring head with you and clamp it in the spindle then pass the bed under it to see how flat the bed actually is in relation to the spindle nose.

Dan

Thanks for that info, the problem I have it's in north Scotland so can't view it, the table is as you say 1 inch plus lumps out of it with 15 holes drilled into it, well abused no machinist would do that" must have had a rough life. I can get it in my workshop hight wise, my fork lift is only a tone lift so that's a problem but can get my hands on a 5 tone one from my neighbor. Found one in Leicester £1500 may be a better buy, will go & have a look next week, view before you buy as got to be the way. What should I look for in regard to the problem part on this machine? I don't know anything about the problems they have, I bought my deckel fp1 blind he said it was working fine, turns out he bought it from sctland & never used it, I ended up completely rebuilding it, fun to do though🙂.

Thanks again any help or advice is great fully recieved 👍

Hi Rob, having looked at the ebay listing for the Beaver in Scotland (no pun intended) I would leave it alone and and opt for the machine in Leicester. I know it is more but you get peace of mind with an undamaged bed, and tooling, which is the expensive bit.

The weight is an issue only initially, everything I had bought up until the Beaver was 0.5 tonnes and i was used to manhandling them. The additional weight compounds movement even dropping it off a pallet but a couple of roof props and a car jack, job done, with a forklift I could perform miracles. Having said that borrow your friends as its better to over engineer than rely on the safety factor of the lifting equipment you are using.

The Beaver is a solid machine but points to lookout for are:

• Motor... older machines have a 415v motor and cannot be star configured (I have had to have mine re wound and yes it would have been cheaper to find a more modern replacement but then there was fitting it and finding the correct spindle and key and..... just saying that there are machines that run both 400 and 220 volt...
• The common references for abuse such as movement in the X and Y, but this can all be adjusted.
• As you can see from the posts above there is a lot of weight on the neck and boom and both points pivot so loosen off the nuts and ratchet the head to a different angle and then back again to make sure its not jammed.
• clogged oil points, especially on the automated oilers and grease / oil caps are attached. There is a grease point in the head that has a plastic cover, without which becomes contaminated very quickly and the spindle will cease to move (call me a drama queen)
• Silly but important, all the handles are attached / available
• Coolent capture skirt... even the one in leicester doesn't have it.... does everyone cut without coolent?
• Coolent guard and pump.... switch it on! there is a very large reservoir inside the main body so the pump does a lot of work. changing it is a cow! listen to how it sounds.

Dan

Lot of advice thank Dan,.

Gentlemen,

​Selling on eBay today for £7.45 is a manual for a Beaver VBRP Mk II mill, currently with no bids. Auction runs to 18 November at just over 21.00 hrs

.I have no interest in promoting the sale, but handbooks for any worthwhile machine seem hard to come by

​The blurb says it has been refurbished by the current owner, but it looks nicely in plastic sleeves.

Regards
Brian

Have to agree with Dan, the one in Leicester definitely looks worth the extra money, although a bit cheeky including a close up photo of a very nice machine vice, only to say in the description that it's not included in the sale... The Scottish one would be worth a punt at £500, the poor table has suffered some serious abuse.

Do you guys know of anybody who could lift it onto my trailer its two tone, at Leicester junction 21 area, or transport back to north lincolshire market Rasen area LN7 6 if I buy it after viewing🙂 Next week.

Got it sorted, just to view now, if good machine happy day😍

Having looked hard at the one in Leicester the vice on the bed is not the same vice on the pallet. If he wants £50 for the one on the pallet then bit his arm off. It’s a precision vice and looks completely undamaged and worth a small fortune in its own right.

He also mentions a “few BT40 bits” which I believe he will try to sell you on top of the price shown here based on the vice situation.

Buy them!

£25 each tops, less if you are good at negotiation.

The machine has an automatic drawbar which is a really nice feature (green with envy) but will need the BT40 connection. BT40, ISO40 and 40international are variations on a theme but will impact what the drawbar will take.

The Clarkson set is REALLY nice and looks to be included in the listing as it is mentioned.

Keep us informed as to your impressions and what happens when you get it home!

Dan

Going on Tuesday all been well can't wait😀

Hi dan, I'm slowly reading through this topic of your tear down, rotory converter! Any leads to that, do you mean like a trans wave🤔 I think the Leicester one will have 5 motor on it, was thinking of using vfd inverters. Would be nice to get your views.

Rob

Hi Rob,

I’m hoping that you have some grasp of 3 phase…..

So first off you need to take a look at the face plates of the motors on the machines….

Fingers crossed that they are the dual voltage variety, 415v /220v which means that with a bit of jiggery pokery you can make them all 220v.

Even if they are not, If your motor is internally connected for single circuit delta at 400vac, it could be internally reconnected to a 2 circuit delta for 200vac but this means you need to take it to someone who knows what they are doing and will cost…which is what I did.

Keeping the voltage the same as the mains voltage (220v) greatly reduces the cost of the inverter as it doesn’t have to induce 415v as well as create the third phase.

The main motor on my Beaver MKII is 5KW 220v 3 phase so I went for a Hyria 220v 7KW inverter (single phase in, 3 phase out but remaining at 220v) which gives a bit of overhead when the main motor starts, due to the initial draw of current to get the lump started and also powers the feed motors which are a lot smaller.

In fact I have a bit of rats nest that feeds all my machines as I only ever use one at a time being me, myself and I.

You might have an issue with the magnetic contactors for the power loss disconnection but so far, touch wood, I have not seen this happen.

The transwave I find are overpriced and are sourced from China so why not go to the source and cut out the middle man. This is a personal opinion and I would dutifully buy if it was made in the UK the same reason I bought a Beaver rather than a bridge port. You are taking a risk but PayPal protects you and so does eBay. If it doesn’t work, never arrives, or there are issues communicating with vendor then you get your money back. You can’t get better than that.

Dan