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.
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