Thread: Show us your mill

Great to see you got it apart with no damage ChasWolf. Replacing the bottom bearing might come down to price, it couldn't damage anything down there could it? It would be the last place oil got to before it dripped out on the floor. I'd be more worried about leaving an iffy top bearing in. Keep the pictures coming
Stuart

In answer to Bryan's request-
The mill in question is a 1965 Sajo UF52. There are some Sajo machines kicking around Australia, but they are not enormously common. I suspect that this is because they originate from a non-English speaking, so they are not a known brand.

This one ended up in my shed because I wanted to be able to cut spiral gears. To do this you need a (horizontal) mill with a universal table and a universal dividing head. The head I found by accident. I was looking on Ebay for a dividing head and clicked on a suggestion for indexing head under the search box. Up came a few things but included in there was a NEWS (precursor to Yuasa) universal dividing head looking to be in poor condition. The price was a couple of hundred dollars with no bids so I took a chance and won. The vendor had not been 100% honest about the condition as there were some bits broken & missing but after I'd fixed that and made a set of change gears plus some other bits I was set. It came in handy as I was able to cut the 127t wheel for my lathe on it too.
Having the dividing head, I then started looking around for a mill. I asked the question on another forum if anyone knew of makes and models of small universal machines. A number of US and British machines came up, but when I looked into the features they were really not that sophisticated – typically only single direction feed, bulky and sometimes not available with a vertical head. I then stumbled across the Sajo make. A Swedish acquaintance recommended them as a good machine, helped translate some information I'd found and I was sold. This one came from a dealer so of course I paid far more than I would have liked, but overall it's a sound machine.

The spindle motor is 3 kW (3 phase) and there is a separate feed motor that provides power feed to all 3 axis. The vertical head (heavy as all get out) can be removed with the integral jib and stows on the side of the machine while it is being used as a horizontal mill. All up machine weight is 1250kg. Speeds (12) range from 40 to 1800rpm and are selected with levers on the sides of the machine. The spindle motor drives the main gearbox then through 3 V belts to the main spindle (that has a selectable integral back gear). Spindle is ISO40 – a great improvement on the MT3 that the previous mill had as these are self releasing. I've also had to make up imperial draw bolts as some of the tool holder threads are 5/8", some are 16mm. Lead screws are in mm – a pain because all other machinery I have is imperial (although weirdly some of the fasteners used are Whitworth). T slots are 18mm – not a common size to find, so I've made some up. Work envelope is 700x210x465mm.
The main problems that had to be sorted with it were with lubrication. The sight glasses were plastic and over the years had turned the same colour as the oil, so none had been added for some time. I made up new sight glasses with glass inserts which are far better. Unfortunately 2 of the 3 gear boxes had been run with low levels and one completely dry so I also had to strip the main gear box (buried inside the machine) to replace the bearings to cure the grinding noise when under load. A previous user had also pumped grease into the oil points so I'm gradually cleaning that out.
It's a smallish machine so I've raised it up 150mm on a stand. That lets me get a pallet truck underneath if it needs to be moved and I also can store material underneath on a roll out tray.
Bonus photo – the 'new' tramming set up. I can't believe how easy this is now.

Michael
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Hi Michael,
Its sure a solid looking machine.
Handy storage tray, you can never have to much storage.
Whats the beam on the top? some sort of crane for the vertical head?
How much is the vertical head gear up from the horizontal?

Stuart

Thanks Michael, it's good to have (especially) the less common machines recorded. So universal means the table swivels about a vertical axis, right? Which gives you the helix angle on helical gears? Sorry, not just the table but the whole X axis.

Smallish wasn't the impression I got, I guess because you've jacked it up. But it did look nice and solid to me.

"It's a smallish machine".

Ha ha, at least it's only smallish. Have a go on small sometime.

BT

Hi Bryan,
It is confusing, if Micheal's is a universal mill whats BT's mill?(maybe a universal table?)

Stuart

Nice mill Michael
Our machine must be around the same height because I had to raise mine 150mm as well. I can see other similarities between my swivel table and yours, maybe the Chinese copied them.

Dave

Originally Posted by Stustoys

Hi Bryan,
It is confusing, if Micheal's is a universal mill whats BT's mill?(maybe a universal table?)

Stuart

A Universal milling machine only means the table swivels.. it is an old old old term from back when milling machines were made popular by Brown and Sharpe...

They came in plain or universal....

Originally Posted by Stustoys

Hi Bryan,
It is confusing, if Micheal's is a universal mill whats BT's mill?(maybe a universal table?)

Stuart

A bitty universal mill?

Bryan's right, Brown and Sharpe along with a lot of other manufacturers, offered their mills in plain and universal configurations, ie. table swivelling on the Z. Then B & S introduced the No. O Omniversal, a thing of wonder, that had the ability to swivel the table on the Z and Y. It also had a vertical longitudinal slide that provided saddle travel along the X axis combined with conventional table travel on the X and Y axes. Bit bigger than my 1100 lb baby. It weighed 3475 lb. Strangely the No. O was not equipped with a nodding head, something that was offered as an accessory on some of the other mills.

A bit of history boys.
BT

Universal is a term that has been appropriated over time. It used to mean a table that swivelled around the vertical axis (table stayed flat but could be skewed right or left). Some makers use the term to denote a machine that has both horizontal and vertical axis.
Don't ask me how the Deckel/ Schaublin type mills are configured when they are described as universal. They had all sorts of add on bits that did all sorts of things.

The vertical head is driven by the horizontal spindle. It's moved up using gearing in the head but then the tooling socket end ends up in around the same spot. The small beam on top is the jib for moving the vertical head.

Small to me means fits in my shed. Most universals that I'd seen prior to this one were industrial sized machines. This one is the same height and nearly the same width as the Tom Senior (major) that it replaced. (sticks out around 300mm more though). The TS was about the same size as the mill /drill on a stand that proceeded that...

Michael

Thought I would post a couple of pics of my balding beaver its a vbpr mk2
made in the 50's I converted it to cnc running emc in 2008 during a tidy up

cheers
Harty

Nice clean looking mill Harty. What size steppers are you running on it?

Dave

Hi dave
there 500 inch ounce 5 phase steppers which give you 500 steps per revotution
plus your thread runs all day at 40inches a minute and can push it to about 80 but it gets unreliable and i have never needed to machine that fast i can bust a 1\2" endmill at 20in min

cheers
Harty

Originally Posted by Dave J

Nice clean looking mill Harty. What size steppers are you running on it?

Dave

Hi Dave,

Going by the pictures of the conversion, X-axis looks like it is 500 oz-in 5 phase. I think the Z axis is driving the quill, rather than the knee, but the quill drive mechanism is inside the head. So I'm not sure how it works..

Nice looking conversion, and good choice of software EMC

Regards
Ray