I have just taken the first couple of cuts with 16mm tooling in my Warco WM250V lathe.
These have been the best I have ever had. The tool easily removed more metal in one go than I was comfortable doing before, and without trying, the surface finish is better than I have had before.
The photo shows what was supposed to be a roughing cut. Better than any of my previous tools.
The WM250V is intended to take a maximum of 12mm tooling, which is what I have been using up until now.
The reason I tried this is that I had noticed that the T51 quick change tool post I had was just large enough to fit 16mm tooling and I took a chance that there was enough height adjustment to centre a 16mm tool. I had already replaced some of the tool holders with longer M8 grub screws to be able to centre and lock the 12mm tooling reliably. Those same M8x40mm grub screws gave me enough movement to adjust the 16mm tooling.
It's a bit close with the bottom edge, having only about 0.5mm movement left, but, as they say, clearance is clearance.
The hot rod build has progressed. Dean has made the main rails of the chassis and the engine, gearbox and front suspension are in place. He is making sure that everything lines up as he goes. Sticking with the original model A hubs and trying to get the alignment of the available brake discs and calipers has been challenging.
He's tried a few that sounded on paper to be close, but searching on the internet for accurate enough information is difficult, so the only option is to buy bits and try them out.
With a bit of trial and error, and only one adjustment to the spacer that I made on the lathe, it has all gone together nicely. With the information from that mock-up Dean can make up the various mounting brackets needed for the final assembly.
Parts:
Ford front spindle (c.1940)
Volvo 240 brake caliper.
MGC or Austin Healey 38mm offset brake disc.
Lathe:
Warco WM250V
As a side note, I have been very pleased with the lathe.
No surprise here, now that I have my own TIG welder, I am likely to do more welding :-)
I can't justify taking up a lot of workshop space with a permanent welding table, so I've made a surface suitable to weld on.
Prior to making this I've had to find something workable at the time. I've tried using a paving slab to protect the workbench and a scrap of steel plate.
The newly constructed welding fixture plate is made from 10mm thick steel plate, 600mm wide x 400mm deep. Specifically to fit across my workbench with a welding blanket under it. I am glad I did not get it cut any larger because I would have struggled to lift anything much heavier.
The plate is slightly raised up to get G-clamps round the edge, plus I've added a few 16mm holes in the middle for fixture table clamps and stops.
There are lots of vendors supplying their variations of mills based on standard components produced, and usually assembled, in China. These are excellent value machines, and the few I have used I have found to be quite capable.
The power feed solutions available for the X-axis are all pretty much the same. It looks to me like a power feed design, from many decades ago, has been replicated and then very basic solutions used to adapt the fitting of that design to other mills.
The original product looks like it was designed for a large floor standing Boxford knee mill. This is not ideal for a benchtop mill and none of the attachment methods that I have seen are quite right for my requirements. Therefore, I have designed my own bracket.
My mounting bracket
I have a Warco WM18 mill but my design, or a slight variation of it, probably applies to similar mills marketed by Chester in the UK and Precision Matthews in the US among other vendors.
The finished result
Position
The main requirement I was trying to solve with my solution was to mount the power feed so that it does not foul the bench or the chip tray of the mill, while also not requiring too much bench real-estate.
Photo from an eBay advert
The fitment for benchtop mills provided by all the versions that I could find use a horizontal bracket held by a rather disappointing looking pair of bolts clamping that to the mill table. The motor is in line with the table so the power feed sticks out a long way, usually to the left of the mill table. I did not have enough space for that arrangement.
I briefly thought about designing and building a solution from scratch, using a stepper motor. I decided that the design of this had some complications to ensure that the handwheels still worked, so for the time being an off the shelf motor with the clutch and controls built-in was going to be a quicker to implement solution. I therefore concentrated on a better method to mount a readily available power feed.
For inspiration, I looked at the way a few others had mounted the feed and concluded that I would prefer to replace the left handwheel and have the power feed motor at right angles to the table and the controls horizontal facing upwards.
Having part of the housing and the controls above the surface of the table may get in the way at some point, but my guess is that if I have something that big on the table, raising it up to avoid the motor is unlikely to be the most difficult part of holding that work.
Typical advert on eBay
Having made that decision, I bought the standard kit intended to hang from the right handwheel of a Boxford mill.
Mounting
My design fits to the left hand end with the bronze gear between the motor and the table. This is the opposite of where it would fit on a Boxford mill.
3D printed mock-up
I designed and 3D printed a couple of possible brackets to bolt on in place of the original end bracket. The result was a bit too large to mill out from a block of aluminium so I opted to weld together some 15mm thick steel plate.
This mounts using the original M6 threaded holes and the holes for the 6mm dowel pins.
My mill has a DRO scale mounted on the left hand side. I adjusted the bracket to maximise the movement of the table, but my design does reduce the table travel by about 50mm. I could probably gain a further 15mm if I moved the DRO scale, but for the moment, I don't need that travel.
Gears
The main bronze gear is supplied bored for a 16mm shaft. The newer WM18 mills, such as mine, have a 17mm shaft with a 5mm key.
I found it fairly easy to mount that gear in the lathe and enlarge the bore. I also pressed in a 5mm keyway.
At a later time during prototyping I cut 15mm off the length of the gear.
I also cross drilled a 5mm hole and threaded for an M6 grub screw.
I bought and used some 17mm ID shims to help position the gear, but these are probably redundant with the grub screw.
Bracket
As mentioned, the larger bracket is made from 15mm and a small length of 6mm mild steel plate. The end mounting plate which the motor housing is bolted to, is made form 6mm steel plate.
Inevitably, the design evolved slightly as the prototype progressed.
I originally had a bearing in the design, but I have eventually opted for a ball oiler instead. That is in keeping with the rest of the mill. I also had to mill a clearance slot for a stepped radius on the bronze gear, that was just a fraction larger than I had initially allowed for.
On the largest section I drilled the mounting holes on the mill, before assembly. Also before assembly, I faced one side on the lathe and bored out the hole for the shaft.
My welding leaves a bit to be desired, but it's more than strong enough and I've been able to clean up most of it.
As welding inevitably pulls the assembly out of alignment, I've used the mill to get to the final dimensions.
Alignment
The last job was making sure that the motor axis aligned correctly with the shaft.
I made a bush to fit with a 17mm ID for the shaft and a 24mm OD to fit the motor mount spindle.
Sketch of the bush
With the bush in place on the shaft and the end plate attached to the motor mount, I held the motor in place on the shaft and square to the bracket while carefully transfer punching the mounting holes.
Ready To Go
With the holes drilled and tapped and everything assembled it was time to test.
It worked well, first time.
I've cleaned it up and painted it yellow to match Warco's colour scheme.
I've also 3D printed the cosmetic covers to match.
I'm pleased with the end result.
End Stops
The track fitting on the rear of the sprung stops that came with the kit were too wide to fit the track on the mill table. A simple job to mill those down to fit. Luckily a standard M6 nut would fit in the groove, so I have not had to make threaded inserts for the track yet, but I probably will at some point.
The bracket for the cut out switches, did not align with any holes in the mill table and the existing holes made adapting the existing bracket difficult. Therefore I made a new bracket.
I thought about all sorts of complicated designs for threaded adapters to try to use the existing holes in the table but in the end it was much easier and tidier to drill and tap some M6 holes in the front of the table. That made the bracket a simple T-shaped bent bit of steel.
I also added a threaded hold to secure a P-clip to keep the cable clear of the slide.
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Plans
For anyone interested in making their own, here are the drawings:
Hardware:
I used cap head machine screws to match the mill.
4x M6x25mm - to mount the bracket to the table.
2x 6mm dia., x18mm stainless steel dowel pins - to align the bracket with the table.
4x M6x20mm - to mount the motor housing to the end plate.
4x M6x12mm - to mount the end plate to the bracket.
2x M6x10mm - to mount the front and end cosmetic covers.
2x M6x45mm and nuts - to mount the rear cosmetic cover.
2x 5mm dia., x10mm roll pins - to align the motor housing.
Having used the mill and lathe a bit more, I have made a couple of adjustments and completed some changes that I had planned.
Guards
On the lathe I've added some simple clear guards to the slide. The fixed factory guard on the compound slide was never any good for me.
These shields are magnetic, so I can easily move them about to suit where I'm working or swap them out for a different shape.
Obviously I don't want chips heading towards my face, but I wear glasses or a face shield, so the guard is not the primary protection in that area. I find that more hot chips hit my hands, which are by necessity closer to the machine and largely unprotected. Most commonly, this is while using the handwheels. My solutions sort that out.
I'll probably make a couple more designs to mount on the toolholder, so I have more flexibility about where they are positioned.
[Update] I'm still up in the air about the guard on the mill. I've tried using some magnetic shields, similar to the lathe. They were no better than the original, except a little more compact. I've reverted to the factory supplied guard for now.
R8 Spindle
Since I've had the WM18 mill, I have been disappointed with the poor engagement of the keyway in my R8 tools. Never having used this before, I did not know what to expect, but I decided it should be better. The collet chuck would engage but not very positively, the Jacobs chuck arbour would fit at any angle!
Over the weekend, I decided to take some time to check that there was not a fault. It did not take me very long to find the issue.
I now know that the key is a simple grub screw and it was nearly all the way out the wrong side! I added a little medium strength thread lock and put it back in, to a depth that felt right. It now works as I imagined it should.
My new lathe and mill arrived a few weeks ago. Between then and now I've been going through the various processes of setting them up. Cleaning, oil, levelling, tramming etc. and adding some digital scales to the lathe.
For the first jobs, I've turned some threaded inserts and milled a couple of slots.
