I suck.

[Susquatch]

If up is really supposed to be forward, it explains the wierdo direction of the handle on my mills power knee. I NEVER get it right. Some things (and some people) are just wired all wrong.

Shouldn't the direction you move the lever be the direction you want to kick the spindle to turn?

 

[Tom O]

That’s what I thought too

 

[trevj]

If up is really supposed to be forward, it explains the wierdo direction of the handle on my mills power knee. I NEVER get it right. Some things (and some people) are just wired all wrong.

Shouldn't the direction you move the lever be the direction you want to kick the spindle to turn?

Intuitive controls was a primary requirement for a new milling machine we had delivered to our shop as a replacement for a Varnamo mill that had some serious electrical issues (that in the end, would have been better dealt with by tracking down a competent electrician!), but what we got was a control board where you had to puzzle your way through about fifteen different buttons, to make the damn thing move the table left, instead of right, when you engaged the power feed lever (which always needed to be moved to the right, to engage). The Varnamo Mill, had one lever on the table, that when you engaged it to one direction or the other, the table moved that way in the X axis. It had a another lever that dealt with the Y axis (towards and away from the operator) as well as one on the the Z axis (up and down for the knee) and both were intuitive enough that the seemed instinctive

The saving grace on that buy was that the mill had been dropped or mishandled badly enough that great scabs of Bondo had been shed at the joints between castings, as well as a bunch of damage to the tin that contained the control circuitry, that we unloaded it back into the lap of the supplier as fast as was physically possible.

That being, I knew a fella that worked in a shop with a Bridgeport mill in it. The boss had bought a very special 10 insert facing mill to use on a special job that required Mono-Crystaline-Diamond inserts... Ten at a time!
Boss loaded up the tooling, gave the lecture on how expensive and important the tooling was to the profit on this job, then proceeded to make the first pass across the stock in the Vise, with the spindle running the wrong way. I have little Bridgeport experience, but apparently you can reverse the spindle rotation, when changing between speed range selections...

If you don't mind digging in, you can reverse the polarity of the power feed so it goes the direction you want. Might be easier to rotate the operating lever 180 degrees to the other side of the circle, so you get a motion that matches the input...

 

[Susquatch]

If you don't mind digging in, you can reverse the polarity of the power feed so it goes the direction you want. Might be easier to rotate the operating lever 180 degrees to the other side of the circle, so you get a motion that matches the input...

I have not decided what to do yet. I have no problems rewiring it or even redesigning it. But it's new and I want the manufacturers guidance. That's shaping up to be a needless fight.