New lathe "kit" fresh from Shanghai

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
The shaper does excel in some operations. And a small shaper can be had for under a grand usually. You'll have more tied up in tooling and tool holders for the mill than that many times.

I think vertical mills are more desirable for most folks because the set up is more familiar. A horizontal is often easier to set up and more rigid, but it's "sideways" in some respects. An agile mind is needed sometimes!
RE: vertical vs horizontal mills, the universal mill is the compromise. We had 2 Van Norman universal mills in the studio machine shop. I cut film sprockets, cooling fins on heat sinks and a number of other parts on them. They were the cat's meow. Also had Kearney & Trecker and a Brown & Sharpe universal mills.
Universals don't have quills, but can go from vertical to horizontal milling (or vice-versa) in 5 to 10 minutes.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.

Ian

Notorious member
I decided a while back that if I ever really need to upgrade my milling capability I'll skip the standard Bridgeport and start looking for a K&T or Do-All universal mill. The beefy horizontal shaft poking right out of the headstock can do a lot of heavy work quickly.

If I were to start over from scratch I'd build a new shop with a 6", 6K PSI slab and be after an Axelson #16 engine lathe, a 24" Cincinnati shaper, a K&T universal mill, and a Browne & Sharpe #2L surface grinder.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
The guy that repairs my watches and clocks is an 82 year old retired Chemical Engineer name Werner. He has a machine shop in his basement that is carpeted with light gray carpet. No stains to be seen. One of his machine tools is the smallest jigbore I've ever seen. It is absolutely gorgeous. And of course, it is clean as a whistle like everything else in his shop. It has about a 30 inch table and the entire machine stands about 6 feet, maybe 6-1/2 feet off the floor. It is not a floor model. It sits on a purpose-built lower cabinet. When I first saw it, I was baffled at what I was looking at. I thought it was some kind of fancy mill/drill. That's when he says, "That's a jigbore, Robert". D'oh!! Home Simpson moment for sure. Next time I'm there, I'll take pictures.
 

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
My dream manual mill:


A friend of mine has an older Wells-Index vertical (only) mill and it's a uch beefier machine than a real Bridgeport. Head design is better for one.
Have heard of them. Never seen one in the flesh. One of the machinists at MGM also said they were superior to the Bridgeport. He said, so much so that they are not really comparable.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
I decided a while back that if I ever really need to upgrade my milling capability I'll skip the standard Bridgeport and start looking for a K&T or Do-All universal mill. The beefy horizontal shaft poking right out of the headstock can do a lot of heavy work quickly.

If I were to start over from scratch I'd build a new shop with a 6", 6K PSI slab and be after an Axelson #16 engine lathe, a 24" Cincinnati shaper, a K&T universal mill, and a Browne & Sharpe #2L surface grinder.
I settle for a level concrete floor of any kind inside a building with heat!!!
 

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
If I were to start over from scratch I'd build a new shop with a 6", 6K PSI slab and be after an Axelson #16 engine lathe, a 24" Cincinnati shaper, a K&T universal mill, and a Browne & Sharpe #2L surface grinder.
Never heard of Axelson before now. Looked it up. Looks like a beast of a machine and pretty well thought out. Reminds me a little of the 1919 era 19 x 80 Lodge & Shipley we had in the MGM shop. It was my favorite for roughing stainless. Lots of power and rigidity.

I've spent a couple of hundred hours running a K&T universal mill; actually two different ones. One at MGM and one at the Universal Studios Machine Shop. Have spent at least double that amount of time sitting in front of a Brown and Sharpe #2 surface grinder. We had two at MGM. Had a grinding wheel explode on one. That will really wake you up (wheel was already on the spindle so I didn't ring it). Also had a K.O. Lee wet surface grinder and a small-ish Rivett cylindrical grinder.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Sounds like someone crashed it or ran it without coolant and "forgot" to tell anyone or check it for cracks themselves. I'm paranoid about wheels exploding even though I always ring them before installing. The only one I ever had let go was one that came from the bottom of a toolbox on a parts truck I bought and the blotter had rotted away. It wasn't cracked and I was miffed until many years later I was telling the story and the fellow asked me about the blotter, I had no idea until he explained it how important they are.

Axelson had many good design ideas that "somehow" ended up on a lot of Monarch lathes when the two were contemporary competitors. I think Monarch eventually absorbed Axelson in what amounted to a buy-out of self-preservation sometime in the 1950s. Axelson made a lot of lathes the size of garages rather than garage sized so most people never heard of them.

I made a 9x13x3" banana pudding with baked merengue for pot luck lunch tomorrow at the plant instead of tinkering with my lathe, more installments later.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Dang, and he can cook too?!!!

So, someone enlighten me. What exactly is the diff between a mill and a jig borer? I was just looking at a jig borer on MP and outside of the much smaller table, the difference isn't clear.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
Generally speaking a jig bore is intended for making precision holes. The head will feed. Most vertical mills vertical feed by the table moving up and down. The "quill" of a jib bore is more robust and a precision fit piece.

Speaking of grinder boo-boos, had a couple when I was an apprentice. Fortunately, they were not my boo-boos. One was on a Blanchard grinder. The big mag chuck was loaded with 1 inch square steel blocks. There had to be at least 500 of them on the table. The apprentice had just finished setting them all up and went on break. The instructor, who was an anal old guy, walked by, saw the machine sitting idle and noticed that the mag chuck was still turned on and he shut it off. You can guess what happened. The apprentice had already touched off on the pieces before he went on break. So, when he came back he started the machine and hit the auto-feed. There was this crash/explosion of noise in grinders and you saw guys diving for cover everywhere. Those little 1 inch blocks punched holes in the l walls and we were still finding them months later in various nooks and crannies in the shop. The instructor tried to blame the apprentice. But he pushed back and the instructor finally admitted he'd turned off the mag chuck.

The other was on a cylindrical grinder. They have a hydraulic rapid travel in and out. So you set up the piece on centers, rapid travel in. Then with the hand wheel slowly feed to touch off and then start to grind. We made tensile specimens for the materials lab in the plant. So, to check the diameter, you rapid feed out, pull the piece off and measure it. Then rapid travel back in and take off more if required. So, the apprentice backs the piece out, measures and runs it back in. But the machine must have had dirt in the hydraulics and it does not go all the way back in. The apprentice gets distracted, probably by someone talking to him. He goes back to work and forgets what the measurement was. The piece is not against the wheel so he assumes he did not send it forward. Just as he reaches in to grab the piece, the obstruction in the hydraulics clears and take the piece into the wheel, along with his finger. It was ugly.
 

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
In the case of the exploding wheel on the B&S surface grinder in the MGM Studio Machine Shop; it wasn't caused by a bad wheel.

Someone had been using that grinder to grind something that should have been ground on the K.O. Lee wet grinder. They had been spraying the part with WD-40 every few passes of the table. The WD-40 and grinding dust accumulated up inside the wheel guard. That had probably happened weeks or maybe months before I used that particular machine. When I turned on the spindle motor, a chunk of that dried, caked grinding swarf fell from the top interior of the guard, onto the wheel. Sounded like a gun shot. Wheel particulate ricocheted off the magnetic chuck and a half dozen to a dozen pieces hit me in the face. Pretty much scrapped a pair of prescription ground safety glasses.
When I removed the front cover of the wheel guard to take what was left of the exploded wheel off the spindle, the story told itself. I have seen guys (old timers mind you) spray parts on a surface grinder with WD-40. Didn't seem like a good idea to me, so I've never done it. Seems my gut instinct was right.
 

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
Yes but not everybody wants to take the time to fill up the tank, especially if its just for one piece...
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
That's sad. A machine tool with a coolant system is worth its weight in gold. When I moved to the lab, none of the machines had coolant systems. We had to use cutting oil and little brushes or squirt bottles. The old Polish guys used this secret mix they called "charna". Have no idea what it was and they would never share the recipe with use youngsters. Probably cutting oil and their own pee. Never stopped me from making good parts with plain old Sulphur based cutting oil.