Modifying a Harbor Freight 6X26 Knee Mill

[Torque Monkey]

My first DRO was on the mill when I bought it. It came from DRO Pro's and is crazy accurate.

The on my lathe came from Ebay but basically the same as Banggood. It work on the lathe. The accuracy isn't so bad but it isn't near as accurate as the DRO Pro's set up on the mill.

 

[Zeb123]

Thanks for all of your information. I am thinking about one of these mills.

 

[Silverbullet]

Well here it's another year bed bound and three more trips to hospitals. My enco copy is waiting for me but I'm not sure if I'll ever get too. Man I thought seeing pain specialist would have me up and at least running around in my wheelchair. How long would you guys old out before selling out? Really my $900. I paid for it could help pay the hospitals bills , there now sending Bill collector's after it. My copays have amassed to over $10,000 in the last three years. I send as much as I can every month but they want more.

 

[jwmay]

I was told, but do not know, that with regard to medical bills, as long as you pay “something” every month, they really can’t do anything about it. Ofc they will always try to get more, but that’s also their prerogative. I also dont think the 900 dollars is going to make a meaningful difference with regards to your copays. I would keep the machine. If ever you do get back on your feet, it may assist you in paying those debts off. If you sell it, it’s worth 900. If you keep it, it’s income producing potential is much greater than 900 dollars.

 

[Silverbullet]

I was told, but do not know, that with regard to medical bills, as long as you pay “something” every month, they really can’t do anything about it. Ofc they will always try to get more, but that’s also their prerogative. I also dont think the 900 dollars is going to make a meaningful difference with regards to your copays. I would keep the machine. If ever you do get back on your feet, it may assist you in paying those debts off. If you sell it, it’s worth 900. If you keep it, it’s income producing potential is much greater than 900 dollars.

Thanks , they sent it to collection service after receiving three months of payments . They had called and was told the amount sent was all we could afford with all the drs hospital had see me there bills add to the pay outs monthly. Ill talk to my friend about this , he's the head of the prosecutors office in the worst city in south Jersey. I am trying to get a lawyer to take the malpractice and failure to diagnosis internal bleeding and throwing me out of the hospital causing my almost death. Worse even they treated me like I was a drug addict or dreg of society. Which they really caused a second more expensive hospital stay.

 

[gman10259]

I picked up this knee mill on CL about a year ago. The P.O. had already installed the power feed on the X axis, a home made power draw bar and DRO. I have since refit the scales to the table for the X axis of the DRO, remounted the power feed to use the factory trough so I can insert T nuts from both sides of the table now and install a 3 phase motor with a HY VFD and Hall effect tachometer. I posted a few pictures in another thread but I didn’t want to high jack someone else’s thread so I figured I would start one for myself. Plus I have done a bunch of reading on this forum so I guess I shouldn’t be lurking any,ore and try to contribute.

The first thing I would like to share is the power draw bar. It is pretty ingenious. The P.O. to.d me he had copied the idea from somewhere off the internet so I am not really sure where the credit belongs. I can say it doesn’t belong to me as I bought the machine this way, but I can say it works flawlessly. There is no way I would have the patients to change tooling with wrenches, especially since there is no way I know of to lock the spindle from turning.

View attachment 256312

This system simply uses a butterfly impact that rides on two guides and is spring loaded so when you let go of the handle it pops up out of the way. Depending on what direction you move the handle the impact tightens or loosens the draw bar.


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Can you tell what your z travel of the table is? According to HF manual it says like 7 1/2 inches we're.Grizzly's equivalent is like 14 inches.

 

[Mitch Alsup]

One of the most useful modifications to these 6×26 mills is the addition of 4"-6" between the column and the head (you can see this on Doubleboost's videos) This adds a critical 4"-6" of nose height over the table so many more things can be made to fit, while still retaining the smallness of the mill.

Grizly's 8×30 is the next larger size, although there are probably others selling the larger knee mills.

 

[t2krookie]

Can you tell what your z travel of the table is? According to HF manual it says like 7 1/2 inches we're.Grizzly's equivalent is like 14 inches.

Long time waiting for you but my HF 6x26 gets about 6.25" travel although I am about to mill out the middle of the front y axis ways area as I had seen on several gents videos to ad another 1-1. 5 inches. Also milling the underside of the table end tray bearing housing allows further x travel of another 2 inches if u do both sides.

I have done more than a few upgrades but I agree with several others, there is no comparable value for the rigidity of this machine at this price for a home machine or even I dare say some small amount of production.

Next on the list is installing the air collet. Just need to find a longer drawbar.

 

[Larry$]

I've got a 9x49 Jet/ knock off of a Bridgeport but still run out of Z travel. There's no win! That said after I added an 8" rotary table The Z got more important. I'd like to use an 8" chuck on the RT but it leaves little for work & tooling. Even a chuck or worse a boring head greatly reduce the available Z. I recently did a project that I needed to bore a horizontal 1 3/4" hole through about 8". Being able to roll the head of the mill 90 degrees and use the X feed did the job I made the mistake of making a 3/4" boring bar because that was what my boring head takes. I should have also made a heavier bar after enlarging the bore so it would have less flex. I did finally get a good finish but it took a lot of passes. There was barely enough X travel by the time everything was set up. Moral of the story, plan your work to match your equipment.

 

[lesrhorer]

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE THIS TYPE MILL USED TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL ,, CK OUT DOUBLE BOOST ON YOUTUBE. He has done about everything possible to extend and use it to the max. Recently he put a vfd motor and system sold for these mills. He loves the addition of that.

I looked on YouTube, and found doubeleboost, but I couldn't find any videos of his on the CM mill. He has a ton of videos, so maybe I just missed them. Do you have any links you could share?