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Moving the head on a round column mill.

Don Sipes

Don Sipes

Ultra Member
Premium Member
I've never used a round column mill but I have read many posts on various forums about the limitations of round column for varying tool lengths. This link offers some hack to deal with this problem that I found interesting.

 
In my experience using an RF-30 style mill, it's a lot of talk that mostly diverts away from getting on with using the mill.

Given that somewhere north of 95 percent of the usual use for one, is cutting to a scribed line, by eyeball, a few simple tricks and some skills development using them, will solve about any of the supposed problems.

Stuff like using a center finder or edge finder, to pick up the edge or a center punch mark. Using a 'sticky pin', nothing fancier than a short pin, stuck on the end of a drill bit with plasticine, and trued up as it spins, to align the center of the drill with the center punch mark as needed.

If you had a mill wired up with a DRO on 3 axiis, I could see the issue, but most people don't and won't put a DRO on one of these like you will with a mill with a decent amount of knee travel.
 
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