Help with Mill new to me.

[APFreak]

My work flat out gave me a mill. It is a clone by Acra Mill.
I have been able to use this mill at work for 8 years and now that it is mine ,I want tolearn more about it. I don’t use itvery often but it sure is a nice piece to have available to you. I havea lot of questions about it.
I was able to move it and get powered up myself.
I have made a lot of chips in the garage. I have also destroyed quite a few mill bits.
I have read on this forum that some people put feet undertheir mills and level it perfectly.
It was never leveled at work and I did not level it athome.
What am I missing out on not having it perfectly level?
If I do decide to level it, how should I go about it?

 

[Great white hunter]

If you want it perfectly level you want to use a machinist level not a carpenters level. You want your machine as level as you can get it so there is no wobble in the machine that will cause vibration. If you have vibration in the machine you are going to have all kinds of problems. My machine is not perfectly level but neither is my floor but my machine is anchored to the floor so there is no vibration or wobble.

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Oh. an unlevel machine may also cause precision problems in your work. again my machine is not 100% perfectly level and I never had any problems with precision in my work but thats what they say.

 

[hvontres]

I didn't use feet, but I did put metal shims in the corners to get my mill nice and level.

After that, I put some grout from Home Depot into the gaps (There was about 1/4" of a gap in the back).

So far this has worked out pretty well. As far as breaking the end mills, you probably want to double check your speeds and feeds. You might be suprised at how fast you need to spin the smaller end mills to get the right cutting speed. If the cutter is running too slow, you need to back off on the feeds to keep from breaking it off... Ask me how I know

Also, In the spirit of this forum: PICTURES PLEASE

 

[Senna]

Cool!
Congrats on the new free mill!!!

Hvontres did some good work leveling his mill and the grout is a fantastic idea.

Are you breaking endmills when trying to climb cut? Sometimes a sloppy leadscrew and nut will have too much backlash to reliably change direction in the cut without breaking carbide EMs. Often this is true only in the well worn middle section of the leadscrew and the backlash nearer the ends of the leadscrew may be minimal.

Once again, nice mill but we need some pics!

 

[Tony Wells]

A free meal...err mill is hard to beat! Congrats!

It's not imperative to have you machine level. Think of all the machine shops onboard ships. BUT, there are many jobs made easier if it is, so it is worth putting a little effort into. On a knee mill, it's not quite the same as working on a lathe to remove twist from a bed, so no real need of nailing it down to the second of angle. I like to see knee mills on vibration dampening/isolation feet, myself. Often they are adjustable, so you can get it level also.....so two birds with one stone. They add a bit to the height though, so if you have any problems with the drawbar up top now, you will want to, and should anyway if you stand in front of it for any length of time, build a 1 x 4 mat or something to gain a little "stature".

 

[dickr]

Ditto with Tony's advice. All though I have found through the years that the height of Bridgeport type mills have gotten taller and the draw bar further away !
dickr