The Chopper Compendium

Soooo I sold my R45 type gearhead mill recently and bought a KRV2000 knee mill, same kind of thing as a Bridgeport but bigger... I'm going to basically refurb it and also do a hybrid CNC conversion as well as convert it to run on 230vac using a VFD... I might just do a thread on it....

nice

Cool.

A thread on the rebuild and mods would be great. Love me some machine tool porn! I finally got the parts for my Oakley horizontal - vertical- shaper and the vertical head is gone from my barn. Guess the junkie nextdoor hauled it across the scale. Sure ruined my month. Still got enough to put it together as a horizontal. He's finally in jail so I can't even work him over with a baseball bat. Hopefully he'll get out before I'm too old to hurt him appropriately.
Dusty

Ok guys, I'll take plenty of pics and share the details etc....

Are you started on the rebuild yet? I bought a 3 hp Millport variable speed head to put on my Oakley. Found it on Craig's list. It was advertised as fully functional with a slight noise in the variable speed belt area. So far I've only found 3 completely locked up bearings the rest are quite noisy 2 broken shafts. The spindle wouldn't come out of the quill because somebody put a bolt 1/2" too long in the stop shaft bracket. Took me 2 days to figure that out! I'm sure I'll find more. But for $260.00 and a 900 mile drive I figure I'll still come out smelling like a rose.
Dusty

Dusty-Dave wrote: ↑Wed Oct 14, 2020 10:23 pm Are you started on the rebuild yet? I bought a 3 hp Millport variable speed head to put on my Oakley. Found it on Craig's list. It was advertised as fully functional with a slight noise in the variable speed belt area. So far I've only found 3 completely locked up bearings the rest are quite noisy 2 broken shafts. The spindle wouldn't come out of the quill because somebody put a bolt 1/2" too long in the stop shaft bracket. Took me 2 days to figure that out! I'm sure I'll find more. But for $260.00 and a 900 mile drive I figure I'll still come out smelling like a rose.
Dusty

Yes I test ran the mil, had to wire it up with a s-phase VFD so I could run it from UK domestic power supply, did a few small jobs to try it out and the brake locked up solid, so full strip down and discovered the brake friction material had come off the shoes and rotated around causing a lock up. All fixed now and a few bearings replaced. I did loads of photos but haven't had time to resize them for uploading as have been busy cleaning and repainting the mill plus 3D printing dummy parts to mock up the CNC conversion. I will get round to posting the pics soon and do further updates as the conversion progresses.

Quick update - after having some serious health problems (more than usual) there was a considerable delay in making any progress, however Matilda the mill did get stripped, rebuilt and repainted but I couldn't machine the ends of the ballscrews on my old Warco 12-36 lathe so decided to buy an older TOS SN40B lathe which also got the full strip/rebuild/repaint treatment.... hopefully I can now get the ballscrews machined and get on with the CNC conversion on the mill....

serious tool envy, Maz. serious tool envy.

-dan

"serious tool envy, Maz. serious tool envy."

-dan



+1 and it's good to see you're back posting Maz.

Nice! I love this stuff!

Just to update you guys, I have now added a surface grinder to the machine shop

Maz wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:53 pm Just to update you guys, I have now added a surface grinder to the machine shop

sounding more and more like your place is a fabricator's playground!

good for you!

-dan

Serious skills there Maz. I've been out of touch, but sounds like you are still fabricating. Hope so, Have really enjoyed your projects and sharing.

Just to update you all..... I may, or may not have mentioned that we bought a 1970's TOS SN40B lathe, she's a big girl weighing in at around 2 tonnes... anyway, we decided to get the bed reground, so we stripped her right down and went on a 630 mile round trip to the North of England and dropped the bed off at the engineer's workshops. While they were doing their thing, we stripped the main gearbox and did a full clean, followed by replacing every bearing and seal etc and then reassembled... the headstock also got the same treatment. The apron and screw cutting gearbox had already been done. Last week we repeated the trip up North and collected the bed - it now looks better than new, and the reassembly has begun...... I will do a thread with details and pics when I have time