New machine day

[kylemp]

So I managed to find a few. New to me machines and picked them up Friday.
First up - a Webb 618 surface grinder
Its certainly been rode hard and put away covered in abrasive, but we get it in and fired it up, ground two sides of a piece of stock and ended with 0.0008 total deviation across the piece. This was without any wheel dressing, balancing, chuck grinding or stoning. It's got one cover for the ways thays been snapped off so I'm not sure what I will do for that but after watching the rebuild by this old tony (

) I've got a little faith that if it needs work it's manageable.

This will have much more to follow as time goes on I hope.
I've never done surface grinding but I wanted the accuracy they allow for and ground surfaces just look beautiful. Now I have to get a granite plate and some better metrology equipment.

Number two is the big one.. I found a universal mill which I've been hunting for quite some time. It's a heckert weighing in at 1.7t, iso40 taper spindle, 3 axis infinitely variable power feed, 35-2500rpm variable drive for the spindle, 250x1000 travel I believe and even appears to have a power rotating table. This thing is a monster! I also managed to pick up some cat40 tooling which just requires a dog change to make it land in the spindle. The downside is that it's 550v so I picked up a 30kVa transformer as well but its 10hp for the spindle motor so I've got some work to do there.. This should do almost everything I need for machining for a long, long time.

Questions and more details to come.

 

[Dabbler]

They are neat finds - I was looking for a surface grinder myself; One in Edmonton looked promising, but it had been used hard for over 25 years so I took a pass.

Good luck on your getting both these machines ready to go!

 

[Colin L]

Nice machines indeed! Looking forward to hearing more about them once you've got them powered up.

 

[PeterT]

Nice score. Particularly interested to see your surface grinder in action when she's all cleaned up. This Old Tony are some of my favorite vids, but I hope you determine your machine does not require that level of rebuild.

 

[Janger]

How did you move the mill? Trailer? Fork Lift? Flat bed? Pallet Jacks? Not some thing for the back of the pick up I imagine?

 

[kylemp]

The same way they built the pyramids Janger.. With a picker truck!

Its only 1.7t so it wasn't an issue for him to reach a bit and get it on the shop apron and from there moving it with a pallet jack isn't an issue.

I would strongly recommend using the dude who's moved my machines to anyone, great guy, 100/hr (2hr min) but its just not worth something going wrong over a couple hundred bucks. If anyone wants his number let me know.

I do have an update to this thread also, I built a 10hp rpc to power this thing and finally got the idler and fired it up today. No pictures of that yet but it did spool up and I got to move it around, it's going to take some getting used to as the second thing I did was bust an end mill off bu running the wrong feed.. It's not as intuitive as having one or two axis independent power feeds.

Theres some wiring to do so that I can have the power feeds independent of the spindle, they're driven by 2 separate motors but the control wiring has some fucked up drum switch that makes you have the spindle on and then bring it into power feed, then rapid.. To reverse the feed you have to shut it all down and then run the drum on the other selections but because it's an infinitely variable setup if you don't let the motor stop it will shear the shaft off, I've got some ideas of how I want to tackle it but I just want to use it right now.

The other pain in the ass is that the tslots on the table and metric and just a teeny tiny bit too small for my 7 clamping sets so I can either make new nuts, modify the nuts I have, or mill the table slots out.. That's still tbd at this point but I may just mill the slots to accept what I have.

I can quite honestly say having this much travel and 3 axis powered feeds is already making me quite happy just thinking about it. I do think I may start to miss having a quill but we're got the other mill (to be cnc'd) that can do those kind of operations.. One I run a 1/4in deep 6 in wide cut I think I will accept that I don't have a quill and I'm ok with it.

Oh, it also doesn't use a rotating screw but a rotating nut on this machine, I thought that was pretty slick. I did mill jthe end on something and it didn't seem to have any chatter, which may mean I can climb with no issues..

More to come, I won't have much chance to work on it until about the 29th but I will try to remember to take some pictures along the way.

 

[Janger]

Like the pyramids. ! Ha

What DRO will you install? Or is there one already?

 

[kylemp]

I don't have a dro yet for it, I've got a bunch of mitutoyo scales that should fit though and I think I'm going to go with the Yuri's toys touch setup and a tablet. Not sure though..

 

[Tom Kitta]

Good find with the stuff - I am hunting for a surface grinder for a while now. It is pretty much an essential tool when you want to make your own machine parts.

 

[Dabbler]

I have been looking for a surface grinder too.... Just missed one in Ontario, but I'll keep looking...

 

[kylemp]

Updates!
I've got the phase converter up and running with the transformer. I'm not ashamed to say I'm scared of 600v so I've been quite careful, you don't often get 2nd chances with that kind of voltage.
I'm likely running too much voltage for the machine as the transformers lowest tap give me 208 to 570v, and I'm probably getting over 600 (550v machine) but Im not too concerned with it. The second time I ran the machine I managed to snap the variable speed feed belt off right away. It's the same as a cvt drive belt but really short and has no numbers on it. After quite a bit of investigation I figure it's a 1922v256, which meant absolutely nothing to me but I FINALLY found out what the numbers mean. I've attached the part coding information in case someone else runs into an issue.
These belts seem to be really hard to find in Calgary or Canada probably and not cheap (like 150 or so). I just ordered this morning from vbeltsupply.com and I'm hoping I get this thing within a week. The belt was only 22usd from them but the shipping was like 26, converted and paid it was 60 bucks.

I pulled the wheel off the grinder and found out that it's a balancing Gib which I'm happy about.. I'm not happy about some marring on the spindle nose though, once I clean it up and balance the wheel I'll see if its causing any issues.

I also bought another mill (of course I did) that's going to become a project. It's in a bit rough shape but the spindle sounded good, and it was cheap enough to justify.

More to come..

 

[kylemp]

Not that this has anything to do with new machine day really, but I did pick up something else that I'm pretty happy with.. Ok, really happy with.
I stopped by the Calgary surplus place to take a look at a few things up and happened to find 3 map storage cabinets. These things are pretty much exactly what we've been looking for, they're massive (4' wide by 3' deep) with lots short drawers. I bought the 3 that were there but I'd suggest these for tooling storage to anyone.

 

[Tom Kitta]

These cabinets look great! Can they take the weight? Maybe when I move to larger garage I get some - I usually strain even 100lbs drawers with steel. Get too much stuff from the states. But compared to local quality it is worth it.

 

[kylemp]

They seem to be doing a good job so far, and I am pushing them already.. That was my concern also. That's a LOT of steel on one drawer, it's straining a little but it seems to be good with it.

 

[Tom Kitta]

I see you have NMTB 40 taper tooling as well - looks like some shell mill holders. Some nice large end mills as well. I have similar weight class.

 

[kylemp]

Yeah the mill is iso 40 but I've got 1/2 cat40 so I had to pull one of the drive dogs. The whole point of the bigger mill was bigger, deeper cuts and more rigidity.. So far, busting end mills like they're free.

 

[Tom Kitta]

I guess I am going to hijack the thread a bit - is it ISO40 as in NMTB40 with 5/8 thread on the draw bar? I know CAT40 has uneven drive dog bays or whatever the name is and thus you need to remove one or make your own drive dogs. BT40 is like CAT40 but with 16mm thread. Supposedly BT40 doesn't have uneven stuff for dogs.

I have two NMTB40s. Tool holders are super expensive. Chinese stuff seems like a waste some of the time - it is having "straightness" issues... but it is getting hard to find nice used NMTB stuff online.

Why are your endmills breaking? I only broken one and it was 3/16s. I also accidentally driven facemill in reverse. But other then that no issues. In mild steel I conservatively cut 1/3 of end mill diameter at most and I am making sure end mill doesn't stick out of the collet anything more then it needs. Ex 1/2 HSS end mill - speed is 600rpm and chip load say 0.002 for 5 inch / min feed with say 1/8 deep cut. Things get fun with facemills - people run some very fast depending on inserts... there is so much more to this since we only had HSS.

 

[kylemp]

The iso or nmbt I believe are identical, but I'd have to check threads to confirm that.. Mine is (I believe) 5/8 threaded but I only have one or two manufactured holders in iso or nmbt. You're correct with the cat dogs, I just need to bring one down a bit to fit either, or I can just run one but that's not ideal on the 6 or 7 inch facemill I have.

I keep breaking endmills because I keep ramming them into steel!
I'm just getting used to the machine, I've only broke 2 so far but I think the wrong width belt is on the back of the machine so the variable speed isn't showing the actual rpm, I'll look into it but I just had to order a new one for the variable speed powefeed and they are not all that cheap compared to v belts, so I may just leave it if it's going to be 200 bucks or something.

My preference is to run the endmills at the maximum depth of cut I can, on a 1/2 inch endmill I'll go for 1/4 doc or more, just really need to make sure your spindle speed is within range and your not feeding to heavy on it. This mill has all the controls in the front, and it's geared to rotating nuts on each axis I believe (at least the long axis is a rotating nut) which makes it harder to feel what is actually happening. I'm sure it'll get better as I get used to it.. Certainly can tell that there's 5x the horsepower there compared to my old Mill..

 

[Tom Kitta]

I am wondering whatever we have the same machine or similar. Mine is a knee mill oversized Bridgeport with variable speed control on the head and 5hp. The other is a horizontal mill from the 1950s.

 

[kylemp]

If you can get there this guy has cat40 tooling..
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-business-ind...ng/1197902763?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true
He said he was going to put a list up of what he had (gauge blocks, boring head are gone for sure) he was around 130 for a cat40 drill chuck (which I'm looking for).