Nice new additions

[Willie van Zyl]

I placed my order with Weiss for a WM280V-F lathe and WMD30-LV milling machine back in June this year. My order finally shipped in November and I now have my purchase in my shop. See below:

A heavy load for such a small bakkie (truck).


Woohoo....nice


Easy does it!...Thanks Dad for helping. I would not have been able to get all this done on my own


Will this hold?


Stand looks okay


They fit right in


The complete picture


I noticed a bit of surface rust on the mill column and on top of the saddle. It is also apparent they did not clean the castings before assembly since there are sand granules all over.
After I bolted the machines to the floor I’m going to strip them down, clean them up, re-grease and assemble. When that`s done I will level and adjust everything.

I would appreciate some input with regards to the cleaning process I'm about to undertake. I want to know what else, other than sand and rust, to be on the lookout for.

Thanks for a great forum.​

 

[grayone]

Baie moi Willy and it's great to see the pictures are now showing. What's the spec on these two machines?

Grayone

 

[irishwoodsman]

its beginning to look alot like christmas:biggrin: aren't dads great

 

[fluxcored]

Congrats Willie and hope you get hours of joy from your new machines.

Your shop also has got ample space and looks very nice and clean.

 

[Nammar]

Dear Willie,

I use phospheric acid and scotch brite (fine) to remove rust. Be very careful with phospheric acid on cast iron, as it will remove the carbon from the metal if left on the slides for a long time and will make it look like a sandblasted surface. Polish the slides with the scoth brite soaked in phospheric acid until the slides are clean, which should be quite quick (2 or 3 minutes) and then wash off the slides using a solvent like parrafin and oil immediately. Phospheric acid will not eat paint or steel and will only eat the rust. Also, acid or an alkaline mixed with vegetable or mineral oil makes soap.

If you are going to partially dismantle your machines to clean them before using, I would do a check of the mating sliding surfaces of both the lathe and the mill, by cleaning the slides and applying marking blue to one side of the slide being checked and then hand rub the other slide against the blued slide, remove it and then observe the degree of contact between the two surfaces. From experience, the Chinese give little attention to the fit of mating sliding parts. They only grind mating parts and then assemble them without any hand scraping. Sometimes the mill cutting marks can still be seen in a sliding surface, which has not even been ground.

Hand scraping looks as if little scoops have been taken out of the metal and would extend over the whole length of the slide. At least one side of a slide should be hand scraped. By doing this you will determine whether the machines accuracy is going to be good or not. The more that two surfaces are in contact with each other, the smoother the slide will feel when you crank the handwheel and the better the accuracy of the whole machine will be. Also check the slide jibs for fit, using marking blue. Those that don't want to go the hand scraping route have improved the fit of their machines using a very fine water paper on a surface plate to polish and remove the high spots of jibs. This will improve the feel of the slides when you turn the hand wheels.

Please only use way oil on your machine slides. Way oil is tacky and will stick to the metal surfaces longer than just ordinary oil. I use Mobil Vactra #2 way oil, but have to buy it by the 20 litre drum. Grease will cause all of the metal shavings to stick to the machine. If you have no way oil, use gearbox oil, as it will stick to the ways better than normal oil. Nevertheless, any oil is better than no oil. Follow the manufactures recommendations with oil in the headstock and for the bushes and threads.

If you go as far as stripping the gearboxes and spindles, you may want to renew the bearings using good quality bearings. (SKF for example.) Many sites I've found on the internet complain about the quality of the bearings used in machines made in China. Chinese bearings conk out in a year or two of use, so you won't be wasting your money here.

Please let us know how you find your new machines, what you have to do to them and their perfomance. Remember that photos are always nice.

Geoffrey Owen.