Thread: Mounting Plate.

Yes, the scallops would be the other way. I tried to show that with the dotted line but it was just a quick sketch so probably was not as clear as it could have been. Shimming the mounting plate is probably the easiest way to go. At least that way you can get the axis square and see whether further work is warranted.

Michael

Hi Michael, Guys,

Now I can see where you were going. I'll put some shims under the back edge of the plate and see just how much tilt I need to get in order to square things up.

I've made the plate and cut a piece of bar to go underneath to ensure that the plate can be put back in the same position after it has been removed. I've taken photographs of the chunk of bar that will be cut to make the hold down clamps for the new vice. I'm cutting the step with the fly cutter. I ground a new tool bit with a flat face, like a left hand knife tool. I'm taking a 10 mm wide sweep with a 1mm depth of cut. In the picture I've about 4 mm left to go. The other pictures show the new vice just sat on the plate so you can see how it all goes together.

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Sorry about the spring clamp. I use them to hold a perspex sheet to stop bits of metal flying all over the place.

Hi Guys,

I got the block finished, just need to cut it up into chunks and drill for the bolts.

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Now that I've got the mill cleared of the vice and cleaned, I've been doing some measuring up. The tram in the X direction is just about a thou out measured at the back of the table. If I now move the table back towards the column, so I am taking a reading in the middle, the right hand indicator moves about a half thou. If I now come to the front of the table, the right hand indicator reads 2 thou. This suggests to me that the table is very slightly twisted. If I rotate the tramming tool through 90 degrees, I get the expected 2 thou which gets less as I approach the right hand end of the table and a thou more if I go to the left end.

I need the mounting plate to support the vice and I thought that I could use it to correct the small errors in alignment, now I'm not at all sure.

Thats may well be good news.
If the error is above the Y ways your plate may improve things.
But you're shooting in the dark.
Stuart

Hi Stuart,

I was discussing this problem with a friend last night and going over what I had done and the measurements. He has suggested that its unlikely to be the bed that is twisted and that it might be informative to remove the bed and cross slide in order to examine the base and dovetails. We loosened the gib on the cross slide and the tramming tool indicated the the bed dropped about 3 thou. After we reset the gib the bed returned to the old reading.

I think that I will finish the mounting plate and the securing clamp blocks first and then pull the thing apart.

Sounds more and more like there is a casting in there that has not been machined square. I'd be finding someone with a larger mill and possibly taking a strategic skim or two to get things back to the way they should be.

Michael

Hi Guys,

Well I've finished the clamps and fastened the locating bar to the underside of the mounting plate. Fitted the plate to the mill table and got the vice mounted. I've trued it up and nipped everything up tight.

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A friend of mine is going to come over at the weekend to give me a hand strip the table off the mill so I can inspect the ways, though at the moment I'm not at all sure about what I'm going to do about whatever I find under there.

Nice work on the clamps and plate. I took my table off and it's about 10 thou different from on end to the other, and about the same on the base, making it hard to set up the gibs accurately. Hope it not the same on yours!!!
Kryn

Originally Posted by KBs PensNmore

Nice work on the clamps and plate. I took my table off and it's about 10 thou different from on end to the other, and about the same on the base, making it hard to set up the gibs accurately. Hope it not the same on yours!!!
Kryn

Hi Kryn,
Thanks for the compliment.
I won't find out until after the weekend when the machine will be stripped down. Fortunately I do have a friendly engineering works a few miles away that have said, to let them have a look at things. At least they have the capability to do things that I have no hope of doing. They are a good bunch of guys.