King Pdm-30 Mill - Here We Go Again.

[HBilly1022]

I just picked up my new mill and stand and after getting them unloaded I found the box containing the stand had less than 1/2 the parts in it. The 2 sides and the drip pan were in the box but no front, back, door or bottom shelf. I called the dealer and he will get another one in. In the meantime I have the mill sitting on the floor and want to use it so I made a temporary wooden stand and carefully lifted the mill onto it, bolted it down, cleaned it up then turned it on. No power ...... what? Turns out there is a safety switch in the plastic shield support that prevents start up unless it is closed. Nothing in the owners manual about it though. Minor issue and resolved that. Then I turn it on and there is a serious vibration. I check the belts and one was a little loose. Tighten it up and restart. Same issue. Try a different belt setting and same issue. So I take the belts off the motor and start it again. It's the fricken motor!!!!!! I ran it for a few minutes and no change but the motor got hot so I gave up. Saturday night and I can't use my new mill after all this work and building a temp stand. I'm not happy.

I had a bunch of issues with my recently purchased King 10 x 22 lathe too. I worked through those but it took weeks and many hours of my time. I think I have addressed those issues but there may still be some lurking that I haven't yet discovered.

When I went through the problems with my lathe the dealer looked at me as if I were the problem and said they had sold lots of those lathes and never had any issues. Before buying this mill I asked the question about customer issues with this mill and was told the same thing, lots sold and no issues.

I have lots of other King Industrial machines in my home hobby shop and I have not had issues with any of those, other than the recently purchased metal lathe. No they are not high quality products but they all perform well enough and have not yet given me problems. I really like my 6" jointer. All of those machines have the same style motors on them and they all run smoothly with no heat up issues so I know this motor is a problem.

What to do? Work my way through the issues with this machine, find another manufacturer or get my money back and stick to small milling on my lathe? The only other manufacturer / supplier within a 4 -6 hr drive from here is Busy Bee and I have read many bad things about their products.

Well I guess I'll go out to the shop and do something other than milling.

 

[RIMSPOKE]

PUT IT ON A BABY VIDMAR . 5 DRAWERS & BUILT LIKE A TANK .

I HAVE MY PM-727M MILL ON ONE & COULD NOT BE MORE PLEASED .

 

[HBilly1022]

After a bunch more fooling around with the mill I found several sources of vibration and noise. Firstly and definitely it is the motor causing the vibration but that was causing other things to make noises and vibrations. The biggest noise / vibration amplifier was the wooden stand. Seems the side panels were vibrating and causing a lot of the noise, plus that vibration was causing resonance bad enough that it could be felt in the concrete floor near the mill. I fixed that and then found the plastic pulley cover was another source of noise / vibration. I located some spots where the cover was vibrating and hitting some other part of the mill. With the cover being hollow that was amplifying the noise. I put some thin rubber pieces between the cover and the noted contact locations which reduced the noise quite a bit and the vibration only slightly, if at all. I also found that one of the head bolts was loose. Tightening that did not seem to have any effect. The last and obvious real source is the motor itself. I put some thin rubber pads between the motor mount and the head frame but not sure if that did any good or not.

End result is that the noise has been reduced considerably and the vibrations seems a little better. So maybe I am expecting too much. I can still feel vibration throughout the machine including the cross slide. However the vibration is not bad enough to cause a tool left on the cross slide to move. Does that mean the vibration is within reasonable limits? I checked my King 17" floor model drill press that sits beside the mill and it has a similar vibration on the table. My thinking is that may be fine for a drill press but not so for a precision milling machine. Is that reasonable thinking or am I expecting too much from the mill?

I checked the motor housing after 10 minutes run time, without the belts being connected, and the temp ranged from 120* F, at the bottom near the fan, to 150* F at the top. I thought that was too hot but found a site that indicates external temps don't mean much. Here's a link http://www.leeson.com/TechnicalInformation/hottopic.html.

So what do the experienced folk here think? Does the above sound like normal operating conditions and my lack of milling machine experience is the real issue or is there an issue? Help please.

 

[HBilly1022]

Well I decided to just give it a go and see how it cut. I removed the taper adapter that was factory installed and tried to install a 3/8" R8 collet but the drawbar kept binding before the collet was tight. Pulled it apart and ran a tap through the collet to clean the threads and a die over the drawbar. Before putting them back in the mill I tried screwing them together and noticed there was a wobble. Something wasn't right. I thought the drawbar was bent and put into the lathe. The drawbar is straight. Must be the collet so I tried another one. Same thing. Ran the tap and die over them again but same results. So I look at the drawbar threads closely and as I turn it by hand I can see the thread pitch starts changing part way up the bar. It goes from a relatively steep pitch to no pitch and back again. The die doesn't have enough length to fix the problem so I kept working one of the collets back and forth until I could get the collet screwed all the way on. Put the drawbar and collet into the spindle and turned on the machine. Visually the mill end looked not to wobble and a check with the gauge showed a variation of about 0.0015.

I still haven't cut anything with the mill because I'm not sure I am want to keep it now.

Looking forward to your comments regarding the vibration / heat issues. If that is normal then I'll keep it and just work through any more things I find. But if I got a lemon now is the time to take it back.

 

[David VanNorman]

I don't think you motor is any good .Perhaps your mill isn't much better. The manufacturer is King? I think I would look at another make.

 

[JimDawson]

I would not expect an idling motor to get that hot in hours let alone in minutes. I have seen a Chinese motor do that, but it doesn't seem normal. I returned two Harbor Freight for that reason. A good motor generally won't vibrate very much.

Kind of sounds like the mill is not the highest quality.

 

[John Hasler]

That motor is bad. The centrifugal switch is probably stuck. Make them replace it.

 

[atlas ten]

What company did you buy it from? I'm in canada also. I bought a used similar style mill drill. No vibrations all way up to highest speed.
Jack

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

 

[HBilly1022]

What company did you buy it from? I'm in canada also. I bought a used similar style mill drill. No vibrations all way up to highest speed.
Jack

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

Thanks Jack, I've been waiting for someone with the same mill to respond. If all these mills do the same thing then I wouldn't be concerned but if mine is an odd one I would definitely be concerned. I got the mill from KMS Tools in Kamloops. What mill do you have?

John

 

[atlas ten]

I have a force international frv 30-md-25. Looks near identical. Bit lighter in weight only 300 lb.
I don't have a lot of time on it. Only to make my fly cutter and try it out.
Jack

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