Anyone fancy a larger UK made milling machine?

**LINK**

Nice, but I don't have an industrial estate.

Thor

50 meters by 2 meters by 2meters is quite a size of material blank. Good job the bed dosnt move.

David

Yes, we used to make small stuff like that, but then we went more industrial. CINCINNATTI MACHINE TOOLS (Birmingham UK). You knew it was a larger machine when the operator's seat ran on powered rails both up and down and along the machine. In the states, they made a machining centre where the body of a tank went in one end, and came out the other with the turret ring, drive shaft bearings, gun emplacements etc etc were all machined by several boring and milling heads. I seem to remember the total marine time was in the order of a few hours before the next body rolled in.
BobH

One of them and you could machine a new workshop shed out of solid billet. Very handy.

Plano miller at BREL's York Carriage works (RIP) for machining DMU deck/base plate was quite a lump.

Regards Ian.

They'd need a new postcode to fit it all in.

Michael W

BobH,

When were you at Cincinnatti? My dad worked there from age of 16 till he retired in around 1982/3.

We used to have a Cincinnatti Vertical No.2 milling machine at home.

Colin

I'm not sure that the "UK made" bit is true anymore - pretty certain they announced in the trade press that they were not going to be building their own machines here anymore & were going to be concentrating on the agencies a couple of years ago.

Nigel B

Big boys' toys - and I want one! Seriously, do they normally machine steel dry, or is the coolant turned off so that we can bee what's happening on the videos? When I saw machines not quite this big in the Mandelli factory in Piacenza in the late 1980s, they were capable of such work rates that it was refrigerated before re-use.

Seriously, do they normally machine steel dry,

Yes. IIRC one of the reasons being that the inserts need to be kept at a fairly constant temperature, so coolant needs to be a very strong flood. This is not always possible & is difficult to both guard & collect. Intermittent application of coolant to hot inserts can lead to failure due to thermal shock. Again IIRC, the idea is that most of the heat goes into the swarf, but I have regularly come across operators keeping a pair of welding gloves to hand to change tools, as the tool bodies can get hot enough to burn you. Insert drills, though, need high pressure through-tool coolant to blow the chips out of the hole - that really does go everywhere !.

the Mandelli factory in Piacenza in the late 1980s, they were capable of such work rates that it was refrigerated before re-use.

That may have been to keep the workpiece cool to maintain tolerances. I have seen some machines that use temperature controlled coolant circulated through the machine to keep the machine structure cool for that reason - including through hollow ballscrews via rotating unions. As Mandelli were manufacturers of quality boring machines, I would expect that they took dimensional accuracy of parts seriously.

Nigel B

Thanks, Nigel - much appreciated. My late sister was the technical translator for Mandelli in the era, and I was invited to visit the factory several times before the company got into trouble.