Power Feed for Mill

[jake98]

I put this on today, it's an arm-saver, but the main thing is it keeps me from having to get my butt out of the chair to crank it. Only made a few chips so far, but hours of fun figuring it out. I'm trying not to be a pain on the machinist's forum.. :laughing:

Round column mills have the problem that when you change heights you lose your registration with the table. Somebody came up with the idea to put a laser on the head and mark a far away wall. I had to try that, seems to work good.

 

[lostcause]

Round column mills have the problem that when you change heights you lose your registration with the table. Somebody came up with the idea to put a laser on the head and mark a far away wall. I had to try that, seems to work good.

i've never thought of that, course, i don't have a laser to try it with either. as i said before i've learned to set the head of the mill so i can do as many operations as possible within the 6" travel of the quill. it's never ideal to mill with the quill fully extended, but i've ended up doing it plenty of times. though, there are always times when you may not be able do this (particularly when using long reamers) so your laser trick would be a good idea. it would be interesting to see what the accuracy of that is (if you get the time, could you report your accuracy numbers?)

i've always been able to stick with an edge finder to get myself set back up after moving the head. i've never needed such precision that i broke out a indicator. an edge finder is actually even easier on a mill like yours or mine than it is on most knee mills. i use an edge finder with a 0.200 tip, and one full revolution on the knobs is 0.100" so once you hit the edge you reset to zero and then make one full revolution. bridgeport style mills are usually 0.200" per revolution, so you have to zero in, then make half a revolution, then re-zero.

 

[jake98]

I have to figure out the trig of it, but I can easily get the laser within an eighth from almost 14' away.. that's a pretty tight angle.
Squaring up the vise with the wiggler is throwing me tho. I get it to about 6 thousandths, then screw it back up. I figure I'm breaking in the power feed.

 

[lostcause]

I have to figure out the trig of it, but I can easily get the laser within an eighth from almost 14' away.. that's a pretty tight angle.
Squaring up the vise with the wiggler is throwing me tho. I get it to about 6 thousandths, then screw it back up. I figure I'm breaking in the power feed.

i've never used a wiggler. for squaring up the vise i use a test indicator. i actually don't even do that too often. i have the vise set close to one end of the table so i have a reasonable amount of work space without having to move the vise too often. if i think i did something that might have caused the vise to get moved, or if i am doing something that requires precision i will occasionally check it.

i have a cheap import vise to match my cheap import mill, and while on occasion i could find uses for the adjustable base, i decided it just introduced one more measure of error, so i just bolted the vise to the table and tossed the rotating base under the stand.

i'm not sure what you have for tools, but i find that a test indicator is a real useful tool to have. they are great for checking setups on mills and lathes. even an inexpensive one will likely work well for you, though i found the cheapest of the cheap ones to be rather notchy and jumpy. i have taken to buying my measuring tools from the lower end of the name brand pool, and it seems to be a good price to quality choice.