What Do I Need For My New Old Mill

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ddickey

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Any suggestions on Way Oil?
I'll be needing a dial indicator. Any brand suggestions or sources?
Calipers & a square I guess. Any other suggestions?
A lot of tooling came with it so I think I'm good on that end for the time being.
I noticed the vise that came with it is cracked on both sides behind the back stationary jaw.
Should I look for another vise or use this one until I gain a little proficiency?
 
Vactra #2

Get an inexpensive 0-1" import indicator and an expensive Noga stand for it. After you have a usable indicator, and use it a while, you will know better what you like and need. You can watch for good deals while you have an indicator to use in the meantime. Noga indicator holders are WAY better than the others, and make indicating fun and fast, rather than frustrating and slow. If you tell me what size your mill is and work pieces will likely be, I can give you a recommendation for a Noga base part number.

Use your vise for now, try not to gronk on it if possible, and be on the lookout for a good used one at a great price.
 
Noga indicator holders are hard to beat. I purchased two of them on sale from Enco a year or two ago.

I agree with buying a low cost indicator. I have a cheap digital dial indicator from HF for use on my carriage stop on the lathe. It works well too. You can get fairly decent ones from eBay or places like Enco.

After awhile, you tend to accumulate them. For dial indicators, I have an assortment, but my most accurate were purchased used from eBay and are Mitutoyo 543-783B Absolute Digimatic Indicator. I also have several test indicators. Some low cost test indictors, which work well and several precision ones that I purchased used from eBay.

On calipers I have a Brown & Sharpe Twin-Cal IP67 digital one. I also like the Mitutoyo Absolute Scale one. I have several Starrett dial calipers (6" & 12") but hardly ever use them.

I picked up several dividers at a yard sale that I use a lot for lathe work. Not so much on the mill.

I have several micrometers. Brown & Sharpe, Starrett (1" & 2") mechanical. The one I use most is a Mitutoyo Digital Micrometer.

Some prefer dial for their instruments, I like digital.

Way oil for my Bridgeport. In the past I purchase Way oil by the gallon from H&W Repair and Rebuild, but I plan to establish a purchase at Enco before they are merged into MSC.

#2 Way Oil (Mobil Vactra) This is typical for Bridgeport.
or
#4 Way Oil (Mobil Vactra) This is for larger mills.
and you might need
#10 Spindle Oil

On a vise, I purchased a new Kurt D688 on sale. I did not want to fight a poor vise, nor sacrifice accuracy. There are many good used ones on eBay and even Craigslist...Bridgeport, Kurt, etc.
 
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After you acquire a dial indicator, I would first use it to determine if there is movement in that cracked vise jaw when you tighten a part in it. If there is, you will never get the precision you want or need in your machining and I would recommend that you get on the hunt for a quality new vise. Craigs List and eBay can be your friend, but you do need to be cautious, because all sellers don't have high ethical standards. That being said, I did find a nice used Kurt vise on Craigs List for a very fair price when I needed to find one for my mill.

Ted
 
All of the various configurations of indicators have their advantages depending on the particular task at hand. Considering that you are specifically equipping a milling machine, if it were me, my first choice would be a dial test indicator such as this:

http://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/09989757

I prefer the resolution to be .0005. If you get a .0001 indicator you will drive yourself crazy trying to achieve that level of accuracy in your set-ups. Some folks consider .001 to be good enough for our hobby machining and they're probably right.

Just my two cents.

Ted
 
I'm going to order Mobil Vactra #2 for the ways on my mill and lathe.
I was given some Regal ISO 46 oil when I bought my used lathe. I figured this is for the spindle bearings and gear box?
 
ddickey said:
I'm going to order Mobil Vactra #2 for the ways on my mill and lathe.
I was given some Regal ISO 46 oil when I bought my used lathe. I figured this is for the spindle bearings and gear box?
Click to expand...
Any light oil will work for you so do not worry. Waylube contains additives that make it sticky and cling to the moving parts under heavy flood coolant use.

Ask yourself a few questions such as.

Am I going to have employees run this machine 8/16 hours per day?
If not, a nice light machine oil will be more then sufficient.

Will I run this machine at maximum load every day year after year?
If not, a nice light machine oil will be more then sufficient.

I just paid $200,000.00 for a new lathe that will run 24/7/365 mostly unattended and the manufacturer says use "Bernies Magical Mystery Oil", by all means do it until the warranty expires.
 
I have a question about my cracked vice. I finally was able to get my mill running and was attempting to square up a piece of 3 x3" x.75" aluminum. Using my square to straighten up one side I took a cut which I believe was pretty flat and square. Then I rotated that side to the bottom but placed a pair of small parallels down first. Maybe that was my mistake but anyways I snugged down the vice and tapped the piece down. The front parallel was snug but the rear parallel was not. Loosened the vice a bit and tapped down I could get the piece to sit flat but as soon as I tightened the vice it would pull up. Any idea what I was doing wrong or could it be the vice. Exactly how can I test the vice?
 
ddickey said:
Loosened the vice a bit and tapped down I could get the piece to sit flat but as soon as I tightened the vice it would pull up. Any idea what I was doing wrong or could it be the vice. Exactly how can I test the vice?
Click to expand...

Seems to me you just tested your vise and found it wanting. I'm not sure what kind of vise you have or how it locks down but on a Kurt vise the ratio is about 1:110#, so 10# of torque on the handle of a 6" Kurt will produce about 1100# of clamping force. If you applied even as little as 10# of torque you are probably really stressing a cracked stationary jaw, even on an import vise.

My advice - get a new vise.
 
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