Advice requested on getting first mill tooling..

[hotponyshoes]

Hi all,
I have got hold of an old (about 40 years!) mill. Very good condition - simply called 'The Denbigh'.
It has a vertical head and also a horazontial bar and support.

The vertical head has what looks to be a morse 2 taper and a 3/8 drawbar.
I have worked this out by the fact that the chuck that came with my lathe (the guy I got it from told me it was a mt2) fits into the head, and a 3/8 nut fits on to the thread on the draw bar.
All the info I can find on the net indicates that this is (or should be) a Morse taper 3 in the vertical head.

How do I check this? Mt first thought is to buy one of those MT1 to MT2 to MT3 adaptor sleeve sets and see what fits.

Once I have done this what is the best tooling to buy?
I will mostly be working on car parts and machining into aluminium and stainless steel (one extreme to the other!)

I have been offered a full set of collets that go up to 1" for £100 but it looks like another £180 for a collett chuck. I take it with the collets I can just clamp a cutter into them or are they more for lathe use?

I know it is a bit of a vague question but what would be a good 'one for all' fix for a 'hobby' situation?

Also, The lathe tooling I have is the type that takes the little gold inserts. I have set up the tool post with a l/h cut/ r/h cut a booring bar and a parting off tool and this covers pretty much everything I do on it.

Is it worth thinking about buying this sort of tooling (used)?

Many thanks! :-)

[Mcgyver]

good quality old iron is like the opposite of dog years. 40 years is not old, its just broken in. congrats, looks like a nice machine if you got the vertical head as well

is it one of these:
http://www.lathes.co.uk/denbigh/index.html
search some the machining sites, network etc, eventually you'll scare up the manual. contact Tony, maybe manuals are available - his site is the best on the web for older machine info

the link confirms that at least some of them used morse taper spindles. if you can confirm that, you need imo a set of collets or endmill holders by 1/8 increments. arbors and other things can be acquired as needed

[hotponyshoes]

It is indeed.
It's the CVS one at the bottem of this page
http://www.lathes.co.uk/denbigh/page3.html

The only problem we have found with it so far is the overarm (the big steel bar through the top) won't budge.

I am pretty sure this is ment to be movable but I will look into it further before i fiddle..

The info on the lathes.co.uk site is about the only stuff I have managed to find on it but I am still looking!..

[nupeswv]

Collet set is very handy for handling a variety of tool shank sizes as you tool up for this machine and will nicely hold a straight shank jacobs chuck for drilling. The drawback of it is that it limits you in some heavier operations like hogging out material and doing decent boring operations. Helix tools like endmills will get sucked out of them on heavier cuts and larger boring heads will deflect. Solid morse holders for 3/4"-1 1/2" diam tool shanks would take care of the heavy work. To determine whether your machine is the right taper, screw in the tool holder and run a finger type indicator up the inside while spinning in neutral by hand or slow speed under power. Slight taper misfit will show up as a wobble/runout of more than a thou. Inking the shank with layout blue or dye, inserting and removing will also show poor fit. (be sure to clean out with alcohol after or it will laquer the next tool in like glue). Good luck, sounds like a nice machine...they dont make 'em like they used too. Some of the best machines i ever run are 50-100 y/o.

[handlewanker]

Hi hotpony, you have masochistic tendencies old sport. I could not think of a more daunting scenario than winding the table up and down to do a simple drilling job.
Even with machine feed and fast traverse, it still leaves a lot to be desired.
If I were you, and this is just my own point of view so don't explode with righteous wrath, I'd get shot of that pile of yesterday's hard labour and invest in a Bridgeport type mill.
However, maybe you got this as a gift or it just fell into your lap so to speak.
It's a cumbersome machine, I've worked on a lot of universal mills and at best they are beasts, that is unless you intend to do serious milling, where the horizontal shaft will be used more than the vertical head and you intend to take out a mortgage to buy the side and face cutters and a tool and cutter grinder service to maintain them.
One of the drawbacks of the bolt on head is the lack of a quill, which makes vertical milling a pain.
Just as a matter of interest, what are you going to use this machine for primarily?
In passing, did you actually seek out this machine for a purpose or did it seem like a good buy as it was being given away?
OK, OK, I've had my rant, the point is these type of machines are heart breakers, big, ugly, cumbersome and dirty.
Ian.

[hotponyshoes]

Yup.
She's a beast.
It all runs pretty smooth so it's not that much of an effort to wind.
All the same, we will use the drill press for the drilling!

It cost £100. Or precisley £48 less than the scrap value. Once we had it loaded up on a trailer we stopped past the local yard to have it weighed and valued incase it didnt work!

Any sort of newer mill would be nice but this is in a shed that a couple of us use for a hobby. Spending anything (apart from the bill for three-phase power) is not going to happen!

We mostly make parts for kit cars so we will be doing things like putting logos into alloy plates to start with.

When we get good we will be making billett brake calipers, reboring engines and lightweight suspension hubs.

But thats when we get good.. We have the horizantial bar and a few odd cutters,
We would also like to skim a few cilinder heads - is it worth trying that on this machine?

Thanks!

[handlewanker]

Hi Hotpony, you should be able to do cylinder heads OK on just about any mill, providing the table has enough travel to clear the cutter when facing.
For skimming cylinder heads I'd use a flycutter in the horizontal spindle and mount the head on its side over the edge of the table.
I would suggest using a High Speed Steel fly cutter for most of your vertical milling work as they're cheap to make and run, and only go to expensive end mills and slot drills where the job really needs it, and if you really have to buy side and face cutters for the horizontal work then prowl the machine tool auctions or swap meets.
You'll need a decent milling vice( a proper job, no compromise here, at least 200mm jaw width), and a set of parrallels, which can be made up from matched sets of bright mild steel flat bar for economy or if you want to get the good stuff try Ebay for a set of hardened and ground ones, mostly made in China.
I don't know how much experiance you've had with mills, this one will be a steep learning curve by anyone's standards.
Provided the beast isn't worn to blazes, you should get many years of use out of it.
Don't be tempted to try milling with end mills held in a Jacobs chuck, unless you have suicidal tendencies and no dependants, or life is just getting you down.
If you are really up against it and don't want to run to several 'undred quid' for a kosher milling chuck, then those morse taper holders that have a bore suited to the milling cutter diam with a grub screw in the side will fit the bill quite nicely, and you only need about four or five for Imperial sizes and about the same for metric.
They're usually sold by firms like Warco, at least they did when I last looked in the back of the Model Engineer mag, and won't cost an arm and a leg.
Best of British, keep us informed of your progress. There's lots of dodges to get round using expensive tooling.
Ian.

[Geof]

Originally Posted by hotponyshoes ....We would also like to skim a few cilinder heads - is it worth trying that on this machine? Thanks!

Before doing any cutting run the table full travel both ways and see if it stays level. I have worked on big old (worn?) machines and found a nice tendency for everything to sag in the direction the table is extended. Anything faced over full table travel finished up somewhat faceted in a convex manner. Handlewanker's idea to do it from the horizontal spindle may help but there was always a horizontal component of movement to the sag.

[hotponyshoes]

This machine must be 40 years old but there is no (and I meen NO) sign of where on any part of it. It is almost like it has never been used.
Unlike the lathe we got which has visable where yet somehow, cuts perfectly stright?
I suppose I will just have to expect the opposit from the mill!

[handlewanker]

Hi 'Pony, I would say "you wish" in the 'no sign of wear' department.
Unless you have a straight edge of known accuracy it would be difficult to access the wear in the slides, or for that matter the truth in the table flatness at each end of it's maximum travel.
As Geof has stated you'll have to expect some limitations in it's accuracy.
For your peace of mind, just give a cylinder head a light skim and blue the cyl block and see if the two mate together.
By the way if you are using a fly cutter or any other large diam cutting device in the vertical head, to face a flat surface it is imperative to get the swept circle truly flat to your table surface, otherwise you will machine a hollow.
Set the head square to the table by sweeping the table surface left to right with a dial indicator on an arm in the morse taper.
If you get a variation across the table, then this will be difficult to adjust as the head is usually only adjustable left and right along the X axis of the table.
To adjust a variation across the table would mean applying a shim behind the head bolting face, being carefull to replace it when the head is removed for horizontal work.
When you do a head you will have to make sure that you can go right over the head with the cutter, otherwise if the sweep of the cutter cuts on the back stroke it will leave a ridge on the face.
The same scenario applies when facing a head on it's side from the horizontal shaft, only here you have a problem.
If the spindle is out of square to the table travel, the cutter will cut hollow to some degree, which is not adjustable at all.
This is caused by wear in the slides of the knee to the body, and will cause the table to sag down a bit.
Wear on the knee to body is not adjustable and can give you out of squareness in three planes, X and Y and Z axisssss!
At the end of the day, it is better to have a mill that is worn out than no mill at all.
I bought a Bridgeport mill from the firm I used to work for, one of six sold, when they down sized the toolroom, and the blokes in the toolroom just sniggered and informed me that the machine was worn out and nobody would use it.
It transpired that it wasn't being used because it didn't have a variable speed head,like the other mills, only 4 step Vee pulley drive, and there was no digital read out.
Now that is what I call being spoilt for choice.
Well I've used that mill for the last 9 years on and off, in my home workshop, "and I no complain".
Ian.