- Joined
- Feb 24, 2019
- Messages
- 957
I really like my Smithy Combo because it does what I need it to do, most of the time, was relatively cheap, and fits sin my garage.
BUT it has a lot of limitations out of the box so I make upgrades. One of the upgrades it really needs is a quill stop. The gauge on the quill is pretty vague. There's enough "slop" in the wheel that you can't reproduce holes with much more than .015" accuracy. NO BUENO!
I'm already going to add the DRO to the quill but who wants to stare at a screen and sneak up on 20 holes in a row? I don't!
On the front of the mill head is (4) M8 bolt holes. I can only imagine that they were for the manufacturing of the mill head but they make a great spot to start bolting stuff to.
I already made a connector plate with the quill stop in mind when I made the quill connection for the DRO. You will see it in the pics.
I'm using scrap pieces of aluminum laying around and pulled a chunk of brass rod to make the stop.
Everything came together pretty good. I have less than .003" tolerances on everything but I made a small miscalculation when I drilled the holes on the connector plate. I forgot that when I tightened it snug to the quill I might change the geometry in the front of the plate. Because of this I needed to add .003" of shim to the piece that bolts to the front.
I'm kind of upset that the bolt store didn't have a stainless M8 pan head. I'll change that out later.
I'm also ordering a M5 thumb screw for the brass stop.
I wish I took more pics but keep forgetting to.
The first piece is billet that I milled down after rough cutting it on the band saw. It's a little rough looking because I departed my media blaster.
I rough fitted things as I was proceeding to make sure I didn't end up throwing it all away after doing a bunch of work.
For the slide rod I'm using 10mm stainless steel that I scavenged from a printing plate developer. A lot of the scrap metal rods I have are stainless from that developer unit.
I used the cutoff wheel to create a slot to lock the bottom of the rod into the quill plate piece. I'm using. I added a 5mm set screw there. It may not be big enough. The slot is @ 6mm so I can go a little bigger if I need to.
Here it is all assembled. It's not pretty but it works.
I'll get a thumb screw like the one pictured here to lock and unlock the brass ring as needed. I'll also add a small brass slug to keep the stainless rod from getting chewed up. I'm not going to be putting a ton of force on the handle so it should work fine. The alternative was to use a threaded rod but, to be honest, I've always felt the threaded rod version was primitive.
BUT it has a lot of limitations out of the box so I make upgrades. One of the upgrades it really needs is a quill stop. The gauge on the quill is pretty vague. There's enough "slop" in the wheel that you can't reproduce holes with much more than .015" accuracy. NO BUENO!
I'm already going to add the DRO to the quill but who wants to stare at a screen and sneak up on 20 holes in a row? I don't!
On the front of the mill head is (4) M8 bolt holes. I can only imagine that they were for the manufacturing of the mill head but they make a great spot to start bolting stuff to.
I already made a connector plate with the quill stop in mind when I made the quill connection for the DRO. You will see it in the pics.
I'm using scrap pieces of aluminum laying around and pulled a chunk of brass rod to make the stop.
Everything came together pretty good. I have less than .003" tolerances on everything but I made a small miscalculation when I drilled the holes on the connector plate. I forgot that when I tightened it snug to the quill I might change the geometry in the front of the plate. Because of this I needed to add .003" of shim to the piece that bolts to the front.
I'm kind of upset that the bolt store didn't have a stainless M8 pan head. I'll change that out later.
I'm also ordering a M5 thumb screw for the brass stop.
I wish I took more pics but keep forgetting to.
The first piece is billet that I milled down after rough cutting it on the band saw. It's a little rough looking because I departed my media blaster.
I rough fitted things as I was proceeding to make sure I didn't end up throwing it all away after doing a bunch of work.
For the slide rod I'm using 10mm stainless steel that I scavenged from a printing plate developer. A lot of the scrap metal rods I have are stainless from that developer unit.
I used the cutoff wheel to create a slot to lock the bottom of the rod into the quill plate piece. I'm using. I added a 5mm set screw there. It may not be big enough. The slot is @ 6mm so I can go a little bigger if I need to.
Here it is all assembled. It's not pretty but it works.
I'll get a thumb screw like the one pictured here to lock and unlock the brass ring as needed. I'll also add a small brass slug to keep the stainless rod from getting chewed up. I'm not going to be putting a ton of force on the handle so it should work fine. The alternative was to use a threaded rod but, to be honest, I've always felt the threaded rod version was primitive.
