# Strange Mill



## jmcghee (Feb 10, 2015)

Hey guys- 
I recently picked this mill up, and can't seem to find one quite like it. It has a strange head setup (no round ram or motor) and the motor is in the base with a kind of driveshaft system that comes up through the column. Obviously someone painted the whole thing at some point, but nothing about the head setup appears homemade to me. Anyone ever seen something like this?


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## kd4gij (Feb 10, 2015)

Nice looking mill. Is there a name or numbers on it anywhere?


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## jmcghee (Feb 10, 2015)

Yeah, it's a Clausing mill, just different from the 85xx's I've seen.  It says Clausing on the column, but it's a part of the casting rather than a riveted-on tag.  It's similar to the Johansson column I suppose.  Unfortunately the tag on the column and on the head are both missing.


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## bpratl (Feb 11, 2015)

Good find, looks like a durable compact machine .


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## w9jbc (Feb 11, 2015)

It looks very much like my clausing 8520 that name was cast in the column on it. a serial number tag was on the column face, i'd say its a variant of an 85??


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## Uglydog (Feb 11, 2015)

Shes gorgeous!
Is that snow?
She doesn't look rusty.
I hope you are taking her home!

Daryl
MN


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## jmcghee (Feb 11, 2015)

Yep it lives here now, it's just not in a place where I can get any pics of it.  These are the ones the seller sent me originally.  That is snow in the photos... he moved it in a horse trailer, and it sat outside for a few days.  Everything seems to be in great shape minus the paintjob (it's a lot more "electric blue" in real life).  I'll post some pics of the motor setup when I get in to it... it has some kind of lever operated brake that's a part of the motor assembly.


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## jmcghee (Feb 11, 2015)

P.S. The seller has a horizontal Clausing with a decent amount of tooling for sale cheap too if anyone's interested... I believe he said ~$400 for all of it.


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## w9jbc (Feb 11, 2015)

jmcghee said:


> P.S. The seller has a horizontal Clausing with a decent amount of tooling for sale cheap too if anyone's interested... I believe he said ~$400 for all of it.



would that be an 8540? I drug one of those home several yrs back. It needs a bunch of work, and its 440 v 3Ph, I might live to regret dragging that home.


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## jmcghee (Feb 11, 2015)

w9jbc said:


> would that be an 8540? I drug one of those home several yrs back. It needs a bunch of work, and its 440 v 3Ph, I might live to regret dragging that home.



I'm guessing?  I didn't check to see the taper because I wasn't interested in it.  Seemed to be in decent shape though


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## jmcghee (Feb 24, 2015)

I finally started to tear into this mill yesterday, and made quite a bit of headway.  I'm a bit befuddled by the motor setup though... it seems overly elaborate, with a lever that as best as I can tell applies/ removes pressure on the belt between the motor and a kind of secondary drive in the housing?  I'm a bit out of my depth with this thing and was hoping you guys might have seen a setup like this before.  Originally I planned on keeping everything the way it was, but now I'm thinking I'll probably swap this for a simple single phase motor.


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## Mister Ed (Feb 24, 2015)

Variable speed unit. I'm guessing that gear set goes to a crank of some type to change the speed. If its in good shape run it. We run a similar type of set up at work, on PD pumps, to regulate pump speed. The units we have are typically very reliable.


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## Tony Wells (Feb 24, 2015)

Looks like a Reeves drive. Plenty popular, very simple.


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## jmcghee (Feb 26, 2015)

So the adjustment gear controls speed?... forgive my ignorance, but how?  Mechanically, the only thing it appears to do is move half of the first pulley in and out.  It seems like it maybe puts tension on the belt?


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## wa5cab (Feb 27, 2015)

The photo doesn't show the pulleys, but if the speed adjustment varies the PD of the input pulley by moving one side in or out, one side of the output pulley presumably move out or in, varying the ratio between the two pulleys.


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## jmcghee (Mar 9, 2015)

Well I got everything up and running last night, and I'm thrilled with it. Wa5cab- that's exactly what the lever does... Changes the diameter of the pulleys at the same time. I couldn't "see" it working until it was running. The combo of varidrive/VFD is pretty fantastic... I was able to get my spindle speeds down to 18 rpm and still have plenty of power, and run it up to nuclear on the high end.


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## wa5cab (Mar 9, 2015)

OK.  Guessed right for once.


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