KeithAug

Thank you Mark. Today the temperature outside was 25 deg c (77 deg f). If felt hot but fortunately the workshop only got to a comfortable 16 deg c. I reached a bit of a milestone in the build. I made the carriage lock for the sliding plate and attached it to the plate with 2 bolts (the 2 smaller holes). The locking handle has still to be made and uses the larger centre hole. With the lock attached I was able to bolt the bearing housing to the sliding plate. I was then able to assemble the milling head on to the runners. The leadscrew and nut were then assembled. Finally I have something that starts to look like a mill. The head now moves smoothly and securely in response to the turning of the leadscrew - very satisfying. I took a couple of further shots to show maximum and minimum elevation.

Mark - copper can be quite tricky - it work hardens quite quickly and pick up on the tips of tools can give a poor finish. Because it is very soft it can also be prone to snatching at the tool. My advice would be to use HSS tools which are sharpened to good edge. My preference is to use cutting oil as i think it lessens the tendency for pick up and snatching - as a result gives a better finish. But here is what the experts say:-

Dave, the strips of wood with angled cuts look like they are the sides of stairs. The treads go in the slots.

Lovely day here - bright sunny and 24 deg centigrade, only 2 weeks ago I was walking in snow - thats British weather for you. More progress - the spindle is now done. The spindle as removed from the router had bearings at the extreme ends:- The spindle had been machined so that both bearings were press fits (and as a consequence took some getting off). I used the lathe tailstock as a press to replace the lower (chuck end) bearing The distance between bearings was circa 6 inch. I wanted the bearings on the mill spindle to be circa 3 inch apart so I needed to turn down the shaft. Easier said than done as the shaft turned out to be as tough as old boots. My preferred HSS tools struggled to cut it and I was forced to press my TCT tools into action. Even then it was a slow process requiring plenty of cutting fluid. Anyway some time later:- The outer races of the 2 bearings are clamped axially in the bearing block and the inner race of the lower (chuck end) bearing is rigidly clamped to the spindle. Consequently the newly machined seat for the upper bearing needed to be a sliding fit. The shoulder on the shaft is about .010 short to allow for the expansion of the spindle relative to the bearing housing. The spindle / bearings were then mounted in the housing and the chuck was replaced. The chuck is treaded such that the action of the cutter is to tighten it on to the spindle. The spindle shaft sticking out of the the top of the bearing housing will be used to mount drive pulleys - currently I think 3 pulleys. The spindle feels nicely tight with no unwanted movement. I next needed to make the carriage lock for the vertical slide. This will be bolted to the slide plate and will clamp round the right hand slider bar. Three more holes were drilled in the slider plate and the block for the clamp was cut from 2" x 1" bar. The final operation on the slide plate was to machine and tap holes in the upper left hand edge to take the mounting for the motor (yet to be designed). Fortunately I think that is the end of machining on the sliding plate, it is already looking a bit like a Swiss cheese. I also mounted the boss on the back of the slide plate that attaches to the leads crew nut. The leads screw nut is fastened in place by the grub screw in the end which via a taper pushes out the pin on outside diameter. this clamps the lead screw into the bore - see phot.

Druxey - thank you - and an interesting point you raise. In the UK periodic table its aluminium:- Is it aluminum in the Canadian table?

So here goes with a little more progress. The bearing houses stands off the sliding plate by 2 inches. A 2"x2"x1" piece of aluminium was cut from bar and the ends machined square. The bearing housing is drilled and tapped (M8) to take the bolts that will secure it and the stand off to the sliding plate. In the previous photo the bearing housing is held against the mill table by the black clamp while the side clamping is achieved through the bar with 5 horizontal cap bolts. I made this some time back and find it very useful. A recess is cut in the bearing housing to take the stand off. The set up means that the recess is parallel with the axis of the housing. The fit of the stand off into the housing has to be good to make sure that the housing axis is parallel with the stand off. The quality of the fit is illustrated in the next photo where the housing is suspended from the stand off by friction alone. A better view of the joint can be seen in the next photo. I needed bearing retaining plates for either end of the bearing housing, these were cut from 0.1" aluminium plate. The next step was to create the cut out and holes for attaching the stand off to the sliding plate. This was virtually a repeat of the operations to connect the stand off to the bearing housing. And once again I did the friction suspension test to demonstrate the fit. The next photo shows all 3 parts assembled and held together by friction. Thats it for the present. Tomorrow I am going to have a go at machining up the spindle and mounting it in the bearing housing.

Tecko I have always found that good quality wine corks are a great source of modelling material. It takes a while to accumulate a decent quantity and the collection process often makes me forget why I was collecting them in the first place. Model is looking like the bees knees.

Mark, looks a lot of fun, the sin off envy is raising its ugly head.

Michael, Druxey, Aviaamator, thank you for looking in and for your supportive comments re my recycling efforts. More to follow:- I finished refurbishing the lead screw, reassembled it and mounted it in the column. I had been giving some thought to the design of the milling head and in particular the type and arrangement of the bearings. Anyway the other night I was lying awake mulling it over when I remembered that I had a broken router in the garage. The router was little used in its first year - probably less than a couple of hours. Early in its second year it developed a winding fault and wouldn't self start. Its was just out of warranty and the cost of repair was nigh on the same as replacing it - so a replacement was bought and it found its way into the rainy day store. The speed and power rating was well in excess of my mini mill requirements and I thought the shaft, bearings and collet chuck would suit my purposes rather well. Stripping down was relatively straightforward and soon the rotor and bearings were out. Removing the rotor winding wasn't easy at all but it was eventual "hacked" off after an hour of sawing. I did a redesign of the milling head after looking at the arrangement of a couple of commercially available mills. I decided to make the bearing housing out of a 2"x2"X3.5" square aluminium bar. I ordered a piece for the purpose - 8 inch long and £13 from fleabay. Chopping off the required length was another hacksaw marathon. The cantilever stem supporting the bearing housing was cut from 2" X 1" aluminium bar from my metal stock. Both items were faced off square using a fly cutter. I love flycutting its so satisfying to see the almost mirror finish appear. Its going to fit together something like this:- There trick to making this work is to machine the bearing housing accurately - so that the shaft runs true. I took a lot of care when mounting the bearing housing in the mill. As bought the bar had a good surface finish and was square and parallel. I used a .0005" graduation dial gauge to check verticality on two adjacent faces. A lot of tapping with a hammer and checking and rechecking using the dial indicator finally got both vertical faces to within .0005" over the 3.5 inch length. I drilled through the 3.5" length of the bar to take the shaft. A bit of a heavy job for my mill which complained quite a lot. This operation wasn't helped by my smaller twist drills being somewhat shorter than the hole being drilled. However eventually I got through. I then had the job of opening out the ends to take the bearings. The bearings needed to be a very good fit so I took it real slow using my boring head - that is the head in the picture and not the head on my shoulders. Having done one end I flipped the bearing housing over and went through the whole laborious process with the dial gauge once again. This time it took even longer - probably about an hour (although my wife tells me time is distorted in the black hole of my workshop). Each end has 4 holes which will take a plate that clamps on to the outer race of the bearings. I managed to get the bearings nicely fitted with no slop. I need to give a bit more thought to the arrangement of the belt drive - maybe in the early hours of tonight.

Hello Barbara, a very touching and inspirational introduction, your father is a very lucky man to have you as his daughter.

Thank you Paul - Both look interesting - particularly exotichardwoods.

Paul, Where do you get your boxwood from please? And where did the ebony come from?

Beauty in miniature, very well done.

Nice work Kees. The rudder is very impressive.

Mark - given your comment you may find the moveable end stop interesting. A couple of months ago I refurbished the daughters bathroom and amongst other things recovered the following:- The bar is the handle from a mixer tap and the ball with shaft is the end of a wall mounted toilet roll holder. I made a clamping ring from 1" bar - bored to have a close fit on the runners and drilled and tapped to take the end of the mixer tap handle (M8). The ball shaft was threaded and the handle was bored and tapped to take it. The end of the handle was removed and returned to the rainy day bin. Recycling can be very satisfying.

Fantastic models Marijn.. I'm sure you will make a very valuable contribution to MSW.

Hi Nils. The spar tapering technique is interesting - bit like the technique of a two gun gunslinger from a 1950's western.

Thank you I'll bear it in mind as an option. A bit more progress:- I needed a stop to limit the lower position of the bearing plate. Without a stop the plate would fall off the end of the vertical leadscrew. I used an aluminium tube (from a broken tripod) with end collars machined accurately to fit over one of the running bars. I am also going to add a moveable end stop to the bar to allow me to preset repeatable depths of cut. I decided to tidy the lead screw bearing casting, the paintwork was a bit battered so I removed it with the grinder wire wheel. The casting was masked up and given a couple of coats of primer. I needed to mount the casting on the top plate. This involved establishing the relative positions of the 3 holes (central large hole and 2 smaller holes). By various (not too precise) means I measured the pitch of the smaller holes as 1.994". The large hole is not on the same axis as the smaller holes and measurement, addition and subtraction give me a displacement of .194". Not withstanding the measurement I reasoned the original designer wouldn't have chosen such obscure measurement and guessed that the actual measurements were 2" and 0.2". So this is what I used for machining the mating top plate. The smaller holes were drilled and tapped and the central hole was bored accurately to 0.750" to take the boss on the casting. Fortunately everything lined up. I also made the boss for the back of the bearing plate. This is required to mount the leadscrew nut. On a different subject and in parallel I decided my scrap bin had enough parts for me to join the Michael Mott 3rd hand club. The origins of the parts are:-

Brilliant work Dan. Funnels look amazing.

That looks like a nicely solid build. I assume you speed control the motor? Is it DC or AC - and what speed controller do you use?

Today I did a bit more machining. Some time back I mentioned the need to have the column base at true right angles to the column axis. I had previously centre drilled holes in the top and bottom plate so the column could be mounted between centres on the lathe. The column is virtually at the limit of what my lathe will take in terms of swing over bed and distance between centres and getting it mounted took a bit of fiddling. I started with the lathe chuck removed and the head stock centre installed. I needed to improvise a drive for rotating the column hence the bolt in the chuck mounting plate. I bolted a piece of scrap to the top end plate of the column. The bolt in the chuck mounting plate bears against this. Because the column is much heavier on one side it had a tendency to "flip over" when rotated so I decided to lash it to stop this happening. The saddle had to be wound right back on the bed as the assembly would not clear the saddle. The speed of rotation for machining the lower end plate had to be very low - circa 100rpm. I tried it first at 200 and the lathe nearly jumped across the room. With this set up I machined the end plate. I don't have a power cross feed so the cross slide feed was turned very slowly by hand.

You must be very old Dan or does the optivisor have a filter? Funnels looking really smart.

Hi Michael. Thank you for your comments. The linear bearing cages are held inside the bearing blocks by a pair of circlips, one each end. Between the circlips and bearing cages are a pair of rubber wipers. They look a bit insubstantial so I may upgrade them at a later date.

Hello Paul Brave having 2 on the go at the same time. I find more than one stresses me out.

Mike There's nowt ere that tha can't do with a bit of elbow grease an nouce. Rimember "it's better to fettle an shaht abaht it nor nivver to fettle at all". Looking forard t yer build log. P.S. - i'm not really from Sussex.