- Joined
- Apr 9, 2023
- Messages
- 128
I recently had a thread on the Grand-Tour-esque misadventure that was the quest to pick up a baby Millrite from...well, only the next state over, but it might as well have been from the far side of the Supercluster, judging by how long it took me to actually get there and back after having made the deal. Fetch it I did, however, and now it's safely resting on concrete in the garage...right next to a drill press that makes it look even smaller than it really is.
Pictured: Which...seems kind of backwards.
I didn't really want to clutter up that thread with Phase 2 of this project, so I decided to document all of my cleanup, setup, tool-up and screw-up efforts here...and first on that list needs to be some active efforts directed towards getting the machine leveled, possibly on some type of mobile base, and with both the drive motor and the power feed hooked up with new cords. So, naturally, I'm going to skip all of that and go directly to excitedly digging through the boxes of randomness that came with the machine in order to see what else I bought.
Pictured: Oh good, I have things that hold things.
I'm kind of glad that I started looking, because I actually didn't know that all of the collets were included; this saves me a couple of pennies. What I don't have, however, is much of anything else. There's a vise, a couple of clamps, a fly cutter that needs some new inserts...but that's about all I've found so far. I have a box or three left to go through, but so far I don't have any other tools, or anything that looks like it holds a vise to a table...so that's a slight issue. And maybe that's for the best, at least on the point of tooling: I haven't used a machine of this size before, so although I know the table capacity suits my needs and physical workspace, I need to look into the tool capacity to see how large of a tool it can reasonably handle.
I know of some used tooling that's for sale locally at a decent price, so once I know what the machine can use I can start making a list of what would be nice to have and then go pick through things. I think most of what's available is either new or freshly resharpened; thankfully, I have about a decade of dealing with CNC router tooling under my belt, so I know what to look for with resharps...and rotary tools in general, I suppose.
Also, one big thing that I'm missing is a DRO...and since everything I've ever worked with has had that feature from the factory, I'm not even sure of where to start shopping.
So that's where we are, now. Order of the day is to finish looking through boxes, look up some machine specs, and try to get a list of "this would be nice/useful" tools on the whiteboard. I can start working on the leveling and the power situation and the DRO later...and as always, any opinions or insight on any point are much appreciated.
Stay tuned.
Pictured: Which...seems kind of backwards.
I didn't really want to clutter up that thread with Phase 2 of this project, so I decided to document all of my cleanup, setup, tool-up and screw-up efforts here...and first on that list needs to be some active efforts directed towards getting the machine leveled, possibly on some type of mobile base, and with both the drive motor and the power feed hooked up with new cords. So, naturally, I'm going to skip all of that and go directly to excitedly digging through the boxes of randomness that came with the machine in order to see what else I bought.
Pictured: Oh good, I have things that hold things.
I'm kind of glad that I started looking, because I actually didn't know that all of the collets were included; this saves me a couple of pennies. What I don't have, however, is much of anything else. There's a vise, a couple of clamps, a fly cutter that needs some new inserts...but that's about all I've found so far. I have a box or three left to go through, but so far I don't have any other tools, or anything that looks like it holds a vise to a table...so that's a slight issue. And maybe that's for the best, at least on the point of tooling: I haven't used a machine of this size before, so although I know the table capacity suits my needs and physical workspace, I need to look into the tool capacity to see how large of a tool it can reasonably handle.
I know of some used tooling that's for sale locally at a decent price, so once I know what the machine can use I can start making a list of what would be nice to have and then go pick through things. I think most of what's available is either new or freshly resharpened; thankfully, I have about a decade of dealing with CNC router tooling under my belt, so I know what to look for with resharps...and rotary tools in general, I suppose.
Also, one big thing that I'm missing is a DRO...and since everything I've ever worked with has had that feature from the factory, I'm not even sure of where to start shopping.
So that's where we are, now. Order of the day is to finish looking through boxes, look up some machine specs, and try to get a list of "this would be nice/useful" tools on the whiteboard. I can start working on the leveling and the power situation and the DRO later...and as always, any opinions or insight on any point are much appreciated.
Stay tuned.
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