First order clean up prior to moving into the garage! Removed a few gallons of aluminum chips from this machine base. The last two owners were commercial glazing companies - lots of aluminum and apparently they like to make mounting brackets, not terribly precision parts for sure.
Well like always its really tough to examine a mill in a confined area that is also loud - compared to when you get it home an begin an initial cleaning.
Maybe leaving it grossly uncleaned is bliss - you never find all the imperfections.
Well hopefully I can make a decent mill out of it worth of the Gecko retro cost and the effort.
Granted this is a 1980 - 37yr old mill (at least according to a driver board tag in the Bandit).
Some findings:
1. Ball screws don't appear to have gross backlash in them judging by hand, we'll see when i get a dial indicator on the bed.
"Y" is smooth a silk and silent
"X' is smooth but appears a bit more friction and not completely silent but a uniform sound (keep in mind I have no prior machine of this heft to compare to! I did pull the spring guards back best i could an it appear there was light oil residue on the screw and didn't see any scoring - but that is really a touch inspection method
"Z"-can't access that until i remove some parts or power it with a driver
Knee "Y" way.
[INDENT] - look relatively clean - some evidence of few small rust spots were spot removed previously.
[INDENT] - one ding on it that i can see about an inch from the end - could remove high spot if there is one with a file i suppose.
- It doens't appear the rubber protectors for the "Y" and knee vertical way have been on the machine for a while - not the best.
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Bed:
No cutting tool marks that i can find, but of course a lot of micro dings that ruin the pride it would like to have - but hey its a 37 yr old mill
[INDENT] Oil in galley bolow the X screw, Not sure how this got there - perhaps its the one-shot that appears to work at face value. Any easy way to drain this. Incidently there is an allen plug on the non-motor end of the table that i thought was the drain - but not the case. Looked like it held a "pin" in or applied a pressue to a pin - though not sure what it may be fore it that is the case.
Spindle:
I haven't been able to move this yet, hopefully there is no scoring - jury still out.
I can't feel any movement in it up, down , sideways.
So after i recoup from the mill move for a few days - goal is to complete mechanical inspection an hopefully it fairs well enough to invest in the Gecko control upgrade.
I'll inspect the axis ball screws condition by removing the steppers so i can turn the dials easily by hand (instead of training for the thumb wrestling olypmpics) put a dial indicator on them and see what backlash really is. Probably should have done this on the inspection!
Spindle niose - any thoughts on that one, probably need to lower the spindle down - see what it looks like. Need to look at the noise source - hopefully it is the belt and not more - well hepfully the baaaaaaaaaelt isn't really $1000 (well guess i would be making a belt at that rate).
Well lastly - im into this for about double the scrap rate of iron +plus my donated time that - well has certainly gained an education in this area.
Fun journey now that moving stress is over.
Any thoughs advice are certainly welcome.
Thx,
Paul
P.S Private mail for how to embed pictures below the text - for better reading pleasure.