Rebuild of an very old Aciera F3

[syyl]

Hello together,

A few weeks ago i had the luck(?) to buy an very old Aciera F3 milling machine on ebay. There wasn't much to be seen on the pictures, except the bad paintjob and the missing vertical milling head.
After the machine had arived, i had to disassemble it, so we could carry it down in the basement. A friend of mine helped me with the more massive parts, but still it wasn't much fun...big dirty machine parts and a narrow staircase.

Some pictures:
The machine, as it arrived in our garage:




The machine in the basement, some cleaning and reassembling had already been done:


The motor, before cleaning:

Its a three phase motor with two possible speeds and after cleaning it runs like new

A few weeks later, i had most of the parts cleaned an reassembled:

Starts to look like a milling machine

Tuesday i rigged up an temporary electric installation, fitted the motor to the machine and gave it a shot.

It made its first chips in aluminium, cast iron and steel, and so far, it works like a charm

There are many problems to be solved, the spindle has a realy bad runout (about 5/100mm), I am still looking for a solution of that. Maybe I will regrind the spindle taper (W20 taper for collets and arbors) directly on the machine with some kind of a router or highspeed grinder...

to be continued...

Stefan

[Hawkercnc]

A friend of mine called Steve has been redoing an F3. Have a look at 'flickr' photo hosting flickr.com and put in Aciera. The photos are under johnamberhawker. If you have any questions - let me know

John

[lonny]

Hello,
I cannot see photo`s of the f3 on cnczone, only a x.
Is that something with my computer?

lonny

[ckm]

The images you posted are requesting some sort of password....

Chris.