Aciera F3

Looks like I will be taking possession of an Aciera F3 milling machine.It uses W20 collets, my question is does anyone know the external dimensions of the collets or does anyone know where I can get a drawing, reason I ask is that I want to make short arbors to mount my tipped face mills on. Also anyone know of a W20 collet supplier or is it just look on ebay.

Try this, Ian

**LINK**

http://www.schaublin.ch/app/webroot/pdf/cat/5.pdf

MichaelG.

A quick search reveals this, any good?

**LINK**

Thank you both, the info and links are most useful, I am hoping to get the milling machine later this we or early next week.

Ian

Could get a blank arbor

.

Lucky Man !!

Please post some photos when you do

MichaelG.

When I had an F1 I found these people:

**LINK**

though I sold the machine before I got round to buying more collets for it.

Anglo-Swiss have some W20 collets on their website.

**LINK**

Have fun, Aciera machines are awesome. I inherited mine but it was too small for my needs at the time - it financed the purchase of a VMB.

If you put in such terms as 'W20 collet drawing' or 'W20 collet dimensions' into Google, you will find what you seek.

Not yet mentioned above as sources are small-lathes.co.uk and www.rcm-machines.com, the latter being very good as they have an ER32 holder on a W20 shank for 89 Euros. They also have a W20 internal thread to M12 adaptor (good start to a drawbar). Should you need a suitable W20 tap or die, they are available from China on eBay, denoted as SV20 thread. For screwcutting, do not be put off by the strange looking thread pitch - think in fractions rather than decimals and gear the lathe 5/3 of 1mm.

Hi All

I have an F3. A previous owner took off the X Axis way lock and tapped out the hole with some imperial sized thread to fit a stop for a dial gauge (he had the whole mill set up with imperial dial gauges to measure axis travel ). I am trying to work out how to put it back to stock, but am not sure what size the thread was initially. I don't think he tapped it all the way down - so there is a possibility I may have some of the residual (original) thread at the bottom of the tapped hole - but I can't screw a metric M8 into it (perhaps because the thread was damaged).

The Z Axis appears to be M8 x 1.25

The Y Axis is M10 x 1.5

I would really appreciate if someone could let me know the thread dimensions and the length of the threaded section on the X axis locking lever. Is it full threaded, or is it partly plane and partly threaded ?

You could contact Anglo-Swiss Tools (Google it) - the chap there knows a lot about Swiss machines.

I once had an old F1 - a beautiful machine though very worn, but too small for my needs. Enjoy your F3, they are great machines.

Link to that company is a few posts up....

Edited By John Haine on 11/08/2020 12:37:16

....and they have downloadable manuals which may help....

Edited By John Haine on 11/08/2020 12:42:14

Ian,

The drawbar thread for the W20 collet is a 19.6mm (although I have also seen 19.7mm mentioned) diameter by 1.66mm pitch. I found that this was impossible to gear for on a metric lathe so resorted to cutting the threads on an imperial change wheel lathe by, as mentioned by DC31K; the easy way is to convert it to an imperial pitch = 15.246tpi

This was as near to 16tpi so, on looking up the change wheels need for 16 tpi, I substituted a 51T wheel in place of a 48T which gave the ~5% difference needed to get to 15.25tpi. The thread is also a buttress 45/5 degree.

Enjoy your machine - they are a delight and if you have been really lucky with getting the accessories, like the high speed head, complex quartering table, vertical slotting attachment, the delightful dividing head and the really rare offsetable rotary table, then there is not much you cannot produce on it.

A belated thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I have actually sold the F3, it was good machine but I ended up needing a much larger machine so I sold it on.

Barry Lee 3,

This morning I checked the X axis lock-bolt on my F3 and the bolt measures M8 x 1.25p with 30mm long bolt portion with a 12mm thread engagement (after it passes through the clamp washer and platten casting shield) the upper portion is 25mm high which includes the 12mm hexagon at the very top.

Wonder why the previous owner did not use the scale / slip gauge abutment bracket fixing? It seems the logical place to jump off from seeing as that is what it was designed to do!

Ah thanks very much for that ! Exactly the info I was looking for.

I did run a very tentative M8 x 1.25 tap down the hole and I did manage to clean up the thread at the bottom. When i screwed a bolt down the hole it doesn't appear to tighten the way though. I didn't want to put much force on for fear of making more damage. Does the bolt just apply pressure on the slideway to restrain movement, or is something more devious going on ? What is the purpose of the clamp washer (which is also missing on my machine).

The platten casting shield and the scale/slip gauge bracket is missing on my machine. I can't think to badly of the previous owner - he sold me the F3 and a Colchester Student for £2K - so I can't complain if the machines aren't perfect.

I'm still getting to grips with the F3. I knew nothing about them before I bought the machine. So far I'm quite pleased with it though

Hi Barry

Glad that was of help. Give me a few days, as I'm in the middle of a job and the machine is not looking her best at the moment covered in swarf, and I'll photograph the platten shield, X table lock and arrangements for you to give you an idea of how it should look.

I can strip the parts off and give you the dimensions. Might be possible to replicate the platted shield, but it is a casting. The X clamp bears down on the top edge of the table in a non mounting position i.e it is away from the component mount area.

They are superb machines which are rightly highly rated, with a full set of accessories there is not a lot that you cannot make with them.

Have you got the exploded spares list view? If not I can copy tht leterature for you as well.

Best Regards,

Martin