Help Choosing Power Feed For Jet-15

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Playingwithmetal

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Hey again.
I am looking to buy a power feed for my jet 15 mill drill. The model I am looking at has the best adapter for my mill drill lead screw. It attaches via the 3 jaw coupler that is already in place on the end of the lead screw, where the handle attaches. I am conserned about the drag that will be felt when using the hand wheel on the x axis when the power feed is not engaged. I called shars and asked about that and was told that that is a trade off of having a power feed. I am currently using a diy power feed that I made but want to upgrade. The main issue I see is the drag. I have seen other power feed options such as the offerings of little machine shop that advertise a clutch that disengages when not in use. Here's the link to the shars mill drill power feed that I am looking at. http://www.shars.com/mill-drill-table-power-feed-for-jet-machine
Any experience you all have had with this issue would be appreciated. How much drag will I get from adding such a power feed? I don't see a place to put a clutch in between the 3jaw coupler and lead screw. The lead screw on this machine does not have a keyway in making it harder to find a power feed that will easlily work on this unit. I still want to have the control to creep up on dimensions. What did you guys do when faced with a similar dilemma.
Here a a couple pics of the mill drill hand wheel coupler.
Thanks
Dylan

image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg
 
I have the align al 98 sp on my rf 30 clone and it looks exactly like the shars except for the paint and name, mine works really well and when not it use the handwheel works as it should, no drag, sounds like a sprag of some sort inside when you crank the hand-held with the power feed in neutral, it has some sort of internal clutch you can hear engage when you select a direction.
 
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Thanks barkoguru. I think I'm leaning towards the model in the link. Do you find that yours stops fast enough for your liking? Does your mill have a t slot track on the front of the mill table.? Mine dosent so I will have to make one to house the sliding table stops. The one I'm looking at does not have a jog switch/button. It seems like a cool feature that lots of other power feeds have. Do you wish yours had a jog feature? Or for those of you who have a power feed with a jog setting, do you find it useful or neccicairy?
Tanks
Dylan
 
Mine is actually an al99sp but it looks identical to the shars you linked to, mine will stop immediately from full speed, when you switch the lever to neutral it disengages the drive a nd stops the travel and you can hear it wind down, it warns you to not switch directions too fast, I do have the t slots on my table also, I have the fast traverse button on mine not sure if that's what's you call a jog feature but it's handy because if you have your feed speed where you want it you can hit the fast traverse and it will get you where you want to go and go back to your original speed when you release it.
 
You might want to give Precision Mathews a call. FWIW I bought a PM932 mill a couple of years ago with the intent to convert it to CNC, which I did. The mill came with a table power feed similar to the Shar's model. So now I had this power feed and an RF30 mill drill with no power feed. Would it fit? The drive connection between the power feed and table lead screw was through a spur gear arrangement. It was easy enough to remove the X axis hand wheel, slip the spur gear onto the lead screw and drill for a split pin. The power feed unit was a bolt on to the table. Not sure what the cost would be but As I said it might be worth a call to find out.

Tom S.
 
Thanks for all your replies. I went ahead and ordered the shars power feed in the above link. It should be plenty for what I'll be asking of it.
Thanks
Dylan
 
Good day, Wondering about the Shars Power feed. Have a Jet jmd 18 pfn. May I ask how the unit has held up and your general thoughts. Not sure if I want to spend the money on a table feed just yet. A few things still ahead of it. It s a no brainer though! Gotta have one at some point and there on sale now. I
 
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