Homemade Vertical Milling Machine

[ecdez]

So this is an odd bird. I picked this up along with other stuff from a lady whose dad passed away. Apparently he was a machinist at the local NASA and cobbled this thing together. That's the story she told but she also admitted she knew nothing about his tools so who knows.

Anyway, thought I'd share since the crowd here seems to like and appreciate the unusual.

I broke the linkage for the Z travel of the table. I also noticed the bevel gears are missing a few teeth so I'll have to track down a replacement set but before I spend any money I'd like to see how accurate everything is. I hope its pretty good because it's a neat little monster.

On to the pics!

 

[Old junk]

A good cleaning and oiling who knows u might get lucky
I like it as my name implies

 

[ecdez]

Hope so.

One thing I want to check is if the table and the spindle are square. I can check the spindle square to the table with a tramming indicator but if it's off how would I know if it the spindle or the table?

 

[Old junk]

Are there any adjustments on the head?

 

[ecdez]

None built in; only the slight wobble I'm assuming is present in the mounting bolt holes.

 

[brino]

That's gotta be one of a kind!
I hope it works out for you.
Please keep us updated.
-brino

 

[ecdez]

At its lowest, the table is only 4" from the bottom of the spindle so I had to to strip the table off and get to the knee to check the tram. It was only off by 0.010" which is not horrible for what it is but I'd like it to be better. I loosened the bolts that mount the head and there was about 0.030" of adjustment to be had but unfortunately it was already pressed all the way to one side of the bolt holes so all the adjustment was in the wrong direction. That means I had to pull the head off the drill out the mounting holes. Probably going up to the next drill size will do it. From the bolt pattern on the back of the head, it looks like someone designed it to be able to tilt at 45 degree increments. Pretty crazy. Anyway, that's as far as I got today, here's the pics.

 

[Old junk]

Looks like you got it under control.get it right and try her out

 

[ecdez]

Well, the wollowed out hole idea worked. I'll take this.



Turned it 90º to get the Y axis and it's a little out.



The dovetail is bolted to the frame so I'm thinking I can shim that out.






Since there is only 4" of room between the spindle and the table I was thinking I could shave about 1" - 1 1/2" of the bottom of the knee to get me more travel. Once I got it off however I saw the gib bolt is pretty close to the bottom so I'll probably just get about 1/2" more out of it. I might try to relocate the screw but I'm not sure yet.




Anyone know what this little brass shim is? Both sides are tapped for the two screws that hold it.

 

[dulltool17]

Funky!
I think the refurb will keep you off the streets for a bit.........