Chris,

Roughly; what size & weight are these machines ?

e.g. Floor standing, or bench mounted ?

MichaelG.

Looking at the design of the VMC there are several parts that would have to be spot on to ensure accuracy. It looks like the whole head assembly rotates and a actual gnat's wisker on the mating faces of the flanges would thow it out. Try calculating the accuacy needed in these parts. Assuming it turns out to be surgicly clean you might hazard a guess the horizontal bar isn't absolutely straight and try rotating it. If that doesn't help try reassembling it 180 degrees around. That might make the tilt the other way.
I would think the way to correct it would be to scrape the flange the head rotates on.

Between the table and spindle there are I think 7 interfaces that would hvae to be spot on to ensure zero error. In practice that would be impractically expensive so I expect them to rely on random variations in one part to be balanced by an opposite random variation in the other parts. Mostly it works (it certainly works in electrical equipment) but of course sometimes it doesn't.

I have the book.

In fact mine came from Myfords together a with a load of Russian text books on machine design.

Obviously didn't read it when they did the VMC ?

I have put the first couple of pages up in my photo album.

Bit ironic that two of the mainstays of British machine tools have exactly the same problem that the Chinese mills have been slated for for years.

I have repeatedly asked if anyone has ever checked this good old British iron and now it appears that they are all / were built to a price.

Edited By John Stevenson on 13/04/2013 00:24:40

Very true, they were brought in from taiwan but reworked by Myfords hence the hike in price.

Chris must have had a Friday morning one as they never worked Friday afternoon.

Yeeeach that tinyupload site seems to be riddled with crapware. don't click just through it .

I cancelled it after a couple of pages of crap and it still tried to shovell its malware into my computer so I had to use task manager to crash the program. Make sure you know how to do this before you start.

Even then it left me with a page full of 'free games apps' – you have seen the news last night about that stuff.
If you have kids put that site into the blocked URLs in your router.

In light of Bazyle's comments can an Admin/Mod arrange for the link in my post at 06:52:59 to be deleted/disabled please?

I am sorry if that link caused problems for users. I'm not sure what has happened here — the link works OK for me and the Norton and McAfee Website review pages give this site a clean bill of health. Nor can I see any chat on the Web suggesting the site is subject to malware.

Joe

Link disabled checked and hosted here.

http://www.stevenson-engineers.co.uk/files/Schlesinger_Vertical_Milling_Machine_Limits.pdf

Edited By John Stevenson on 13/04/2013 15:39:02

.

Nicely done, John

MichaelG.

I was most interested to read the comments about the Rishton milling machine as some years ago I made the mistake of buying one. (new) Believing at the time that British must be best and perhaps slightly beguiled by the fact that it was made by a company described as precision engineers I spent rather a lot of money to be very dissappointed. The spindle was out of truth to the table. I'd bought it from a reputable dealer who came and had a look, agreed it was rather poor and offered to either refund my money or get me a replacement. As, of course, British engineering was absolutely the very best in the world I assumed mine was maybe a Friday afternoon job and opted for a replacement. This came and though an improvement was still not right. I complained again and again the dealer called, agreed with me and said he'd discuss it with the MD of the manufacturers. He subsequently reported back to me the MD's response. "What's he expect, a Bridgeport." A further replacement wasn't on the cards so rather than a refund I decided to make the best of it. There wasn't a lot about at the time in the way of small milling machines, I do recall the Emco FB and some clones of same. I was however never able to get the head to move correctly up and down the column, which was a necessary requirement given the lack of fine feed on the quill. I still remember with some anguish my desperation in trying to bore a cylinder on the machine. Although it wasn't purchased from Myfords (Beeston) I did subsequently have the oportunity to discuss it with a Myfords fitter who'd had experience of them and he'd also found appropriate head adjustment barely possible. The head was either loose or stuck. I wouldn't fault the base and table but as for the head and column…………..well. With increasing fustration it had to go and I eventually got a Myford (Beeston) VMB. I've found this a super machine and I wouldn't part with it. I've never understood why there didn't appear to have been a greater take up of them by people such as myself without space for a large machine. I'm convinced a milling machine really needs a dovetailed column rather than a round one. I've also got a small X1 machine which came from Arc-Euro and that has also afforded me every satisfaction. Athough it's tiny I'd never swap it for a Rishton.

Well many stories have a moral and this is no exception. History shows us that mankind has a tendency to look back to some golden age and British Engineering was one of them. Yes, a lot of it was golden and still is but there's always been the mediocre and poorly designed and still is. The philosophy often seemed to be "barely good enough will do". I remember reading on an earlier posting some criticism of Raglan Milling machines by someone who'd been involved in their manufacture. So in essence one should be wary of deriding all Chinese and Indian products. There's good and bad, just as there were and are in those of British manufacture. In conclusion do a bit of googling re Moore& Wright combination squares. I was surprised.

Michael