Hi Ian,

Me mate Trevor has an AEW and has given up on it. Nicely made and so forth but the vertical head sits on the end of the horizontal spindle and as a result there is really no room between the vert spindle nose and the bed: like 4" no room. He's planning to pass his on and bought something much bigger.

They are probably a nice horizontal but no use as a vertical

Phil

Not had that particular mill, but have had several similar, Tom Senior etc, last one was a lovely universal Delta Hero,

Found them all frustrating due to lack of daylight, you run out of room very quickly.

Vertical heads are also pretty useless for drilling, as it’s hard to feel whats going on when cranking a handle.

And of course you can only drill vertical holes.

I wouldn’t consider a mill without a quill now, it just makes everything so much easier.

I had many years ago a Tom senior with the standard vertical head,no room under spindle,head has to be removed to use the horizontal spindle,and 2MT spindle ,this size of spindle and tooling is too light for general work,I moved onto a full size turret mill and a universal mill with 40 int spindles,I have now downsized my workshop and now just have an Elliot 00 Omnimill which has 3 mt vertical and horizontal spindles ,it is easy and quick to change from vert to horizontal just by swinging the whole vert head assembly to one sde,no lifting involved.and lots of space under the spindle. It was fitted with a 3000 rpm 3/4 hp single phase motor by a previous owner far too fast ,and even with a 1450 rpm motor bottom speed was too high for me at 200 rpm,too high for large slitting saws on tough materials,now improved with Newton tesla inverter pack with 1 1/2 hp motor(80mm frame) It has quill feed and head swivels.When using heavy cuts on steel I have made a quick fit steady plate to stiffen the vertical head.photo on my album.When milling always go for the larger spindle .The 3mt vert spindle allows the mill to be used a heavy duty drilling machine,though I dont use it as I have a 10 speed Meddings floor standing drill which is a very good machine.

I have an AEW vertical mill which I've kept busy for 20 years and I like it – it's a good machine and I've have done a lot of work on it.

It is accurate and robust for it's class and size, but it is a small mill, not a Bridgeport, with restricted daylight compared to a bigger machine. But it fits into the corner of my crowded workshop perfectly.

A quill feed would have been very nice, yes, but I have had to accept that it takes 60 seconds longer per hole if I want to drill on the same setting, and sometimes a long taper drill on a high part is too long to fit because of the taper adapter from 30INT to MT, so if I run out of room or have a lot of holes to drill, I pilot or spot and transfer to the drill. Driiling tiny holes would obviously not be a sensible thing to attempt, but larger than 1mm is possible with care.

My first mill was a new FE Mill/Drill which I sold within a year and bought the ex-school AEW. No regrets on that decision.

Cheers Will

Worth remembering that the AEW and similar vertical mills are fundamentally small industrial types designed for a different style of work to Bridgeports and similar machines having quills with sensitive drilling capability.

Basically, on the shop floor, they were used like horizontal mills so great table to cutter depth and drilling capability are simply not needed. Oversimplifying the industrial advantage is primarily being able to cut to a square or defined angle corner. The disadvantage compared to horizontal mills is the inability to rapidly bury the operator in chips! A big horizontal wearing a slab or set of gang cutters run hard on piece work shifts metal at positively unreal rate.

Big basic industrial vertical mill do have significant workpiece depth capability but thats basically a byproduct of the size needed to handle large workpieces. The cutters are generally situ fairly short so you don't need huge movement to clear the job.

Some industrial types did have alternative vertical heads fitted with quills. Elliott / Victoria called theirs fine feed types. Usually tow or three inches of extra daylight compared to the standard vertical. Mostly found, as on the Elliot /Victoria range, on basic mills with relatively large table to spindle distance. Having played with the Elliott/Victoria 2 series the fine feed head is very good but the higher build of the machine is not an un-mixed blessing as compared to an Adcock Shipley. From an industrial point of view the Adcokc Shipley elevating head system can be a useful idea. But sensitive drilling is seriously not what its intended for.