Atlas Mfc Horizontal Milling Machine Rebuild

[BradH]

I would like to share my project of rebuilding an old Atlas MFC horizontal mill. Purchased 3 months ago, the mill had not been run in over 20 years. As you can see in the beginning picture, there was a fair amount of "light" rust everywhere. Initially I didn't think this would be a problem, until I tried to disassemble the mill. Apparently Atlas built this machine with VERY tight tolerances, as a tiny bit of rust literally froze the parts tight. After a few gallons of Evaporust and some gentle persuasion, everything came apart and the rebuild began. All-in-all the mill was in pretty good shape, with only 4 gears needing replacement, which were available on EBay.


Here are the pictures of the re-assembly after all the parts and components were de-greased, de-rusted, primed, painted and refurbished.
























It runs very smooth and I think it will be a great companion for my Atlas 618 lathe, which I restored 6 months ago.



Hope you enjoyed the pictures!
Thanks,

 

[Randall Marx]

WOW! Those look great! Nice work and thanks for sharing. Also, welcome to the site!

 

[pollardd]

Really nice job! I bet you are pleased with the way it came out.
I have wished I owned one of these for a while. Sadly there aren't many of them around in Australia.
I live in hope

Another chap on this forum was recently asking about "Normal" backlash on one of these machines. (or very similar machine)
He might be interested to know how much backlash ended up with once you readjusted everything.
http://www.hobby-machinist.com/thre...n-an-atlas-mfc-mill-x-axis.50497/#post-424605

David

 

[wrat]

I positively adore these kinds of resto-threads. Good pics. Good work. Good job.

 

[Ulma Doctor]

nice

 

[Fairbanks]

Very nice!

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

[34_40]

WOW, that's SWEET! You've done an amazing job. What's the color?

 

[BradH]

WOW, that's SWEET! You've done an amazing job. What's the color?

It's Rustoleum "Dark Steel". Kind of a nice metallic.

 

[westsailpat]

Really nice Brad , as a 618 owner I'm very inspired by all this . Thanks for sharing .

 

[ndnchf]

Wow -that's beautiful. I'd love to add one of those to my home shop. Besides disassembly, did you encounter any other big challenges?